


Ghosts, Spies and Campfire Lies

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Chuck (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Camping, Case Fic, Chuck Season 1, Corn - Freeform, Crossover, Gen, Guns, Humor, Supernatural Summergen Fic Exchange, Supernatural season 3, abandoned campground, families and friendships, mild crack, my own crappy art too yay, slightly creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-07
Updated: 2009-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abandoned campgrounds are never a good idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I own neither Supernatural, nor the TV series Chuck.  
>  Written for [**dotfic**](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/)'s **spn_summergen** Prompt. Takes place less than a week before Supernatural Episode 3.05 (Bedtime Stories) and a day or two after Chuck Episode 1.05 (Chuck vs. the Sizzling Shrimp). Minor edits have been made from the original posting, because I managed to add in glitches after the betas were done with it.
> 
> _Originally posted anon on the SPN Summergen fic exchange. Deanoned and reposted September 7, 2009_

Sun shone in slashes, filtering between oak and alder trees along the wooded back road, hitting the side windows of the Impala like a strobe light as the car zipped past. Dean slung the Impala around a curve at full speed just because he could, grinning as fallen leaves swirled up in the car's wake.

"We shouldn't be chasing after random crap that probably isn't even a case, Dean."

There was the Impala's resident ray of sunshine again, expressing the same sentiment he'd been expressing since they left Philadelphia.

"Oh, there's a case here, Sam. I know it."

"This isn't another nookie run like Cicero, Indiana last June?"

"No, and if you'll recall, that was a case too." Dean glanced at Sam before turning his attention back to the road. "You need to learn to trust my instincts, dude."

Sam pursed his lips and frowned. Dean thought he might be restraining the urge to argue, but he looked constipated. "Okay, fine, what are you thinking?"

"What's that Japanese thing that leads hikers astray? Bobby said something about it that once, remember?"

"A Tengu?"

"Yeah. We've never had one of those."

Sam shook his head. "It's a mountain spirit. No mountains."

"Hunh. Will o' the wisp?"

"No swamp."

"Demon?"

"There's nothing that supports any relation to demonic activity, Bobby checked." Sam pulled a handful of printouts from the laptop bag and spread them over the map in his lap. "Plus, this has been happening a long time, over the past ten or more years, not just in the last few months."

Dean nodded. "So if it's a demon, it's been here a while."

"And doesn't leave any of the usual signs of demonic activity."

"You're sure Bobby said there were no demonic weather patterns? Seems kind of hot for October."

"It's California, Dean, not Minnesota. Seventy degrees is perfectly normal for October."

Dean grinned. "Now that's my kind of normal. Hey, we should spend this whole winter in California! Whadda ya think, Sammy? I'd never have to shovel the Impala out of a motel parking lot again as long as I live."

Sam fell silent. Glancing over, Dean saw his brother glowering out the window at the road racing past.

Dean frowned and cleared his throat. "Wendigo?"

Sam sighed. "It's _still_ not Minnesota, Dean."

"That last one was in Colorado." Dean glanced at Sam with a grin. "Remember that one? Couple years back?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay, fine, but that one was an anomaly."

"Actually, Sam, I'm pretty sure it was a Wendigo," said Dean, with the too-serious tone of 'baiting Sammy'.

Sam sighed again and refused to bite. "If this was a Wendigo too it'd be two anomalies, unless Wendigos are migratory or affected by climate change."

"Who knows, maybe they are. Wendigo as a possible?"

"Sure, why not? Why not Cornish pixies?" Sam raised his hands and dropped them onto the papers in his lap with a sharp rustle. "I mean, do we have _anything_ to base a case-theory off of, beyond your instincts and 'hikers gone missing'?"

"Twenty-three hikers gone missing with no trace over the past ten years, no gear, no bodies ever found. Same general area of woods."

"I've read Dad's journal cover to cover more times than I can count and there is nothing about this particular area. Bobby says there's nothing as far as he can tell either. There's no real pattern to it, Dean. This isn't a case."

"No individuals, always at least two. That's a pattern."

"Yeah, if you're desperate. Other than that the demographics are all over the map." Sam shuffled through the print-outs. "Husbands and wives, parents and children, three high school kids, a four-person corporate team-building retreat, no age similarities, nothing. Hikers go missing all the time, Dean."

"Not ones that aren't found at all. Almost all missing hikers turn up eventually, alive or dead. These ones, no gear left behind, gone without a trace."

Sam shrugged, "Maybe there's a sinkhole hidden somewhere, or a ravine or something. Maybe they're just missing and it's not our kind of gig. The region was active during the gold rush years, there could be uncharted, abandoned mines or natural cave systems."

Dean shook his head. "Nuh uh. Doesn't feel right."

"Nothing we've got indicates these disappearances are in any way caused by something supernatural."

Dean glanced over at his brother. "Why are you dragging your heels on this case Sam?"

Sam shifted in his seat. "I just think that since the Colt's fixed now, we should be hunting down more of the demons that got out of Hell, not going after random possible cases out in the bush."

The last demon they had encountered had been Casey. She'd told Dean that Sam was supposed to lead the demons, and that she'd been willing to follow Sam. Casey, who Sam had shot with the Colt his demon friend Ruby had helped rebuild.

Dean's jaw clenched. "You happen to know any demons we can shoot, Sam?"

Sam turned toward the window. "No."

"Fine then. We can go check out this place."

Sam huffed, shoving the print-outs back into the laptop bag, and looked back down at the map. "There's an old campground at the edge of the area. I looked it up online, it was closed down ten years ago."

"Right when the disappearances started to pick up. It say why they closed down?"

"Wasn't making money, I guess. Could be something to do with the missing hikers, but the former owners have disappeared too so we can't ask them."

Dean frowned. "Disappeared like the hikers disappeared?"

"Naw, the mundane kind of disappearing. They just left town and no one knows where they went."

"So, abandoned campground." Dean grinned. "Hey, think it might be Jason?"

"Shut up," Sam grumbled with a slight smirk.

Dean looked wistfully out the window, keeping a corner of his eye on Sam. "I always wanted to take that hockey-masked bastard down."

"Yeah, yeah." Full smirk now. Good.

"There's no chance there's going to be happy campers there anyway, right? A campsite being closed doesn't mean people won't still camp there on the sly."

"It's not maintained, and not part of the state parks system so I don't know. I doubt it though. It's October. Who goes camping in October?"

-

"Well, you were right about there being no crowds."

Ellie Bartowski rolled down the window of the little red and white car. Past the big 'campsite closed' signs, the first few sites showed signs of hosting some hard partying.

Chuck leaned out of the Nerd Herder and looked at the faded signs in dismay. "I'm sorry, Ellie, I didn't even think that it wouldn't still be open."

"It's been over fifteen years since we used to camp here with Dad and Mom, Chuck. We were kids. I guess things change."

"Let's take a look anyway. We're here, right? Maybe the amateur wrecking crew missed our old spot."

Ellie crossed her arms and looked at the nearest campsite. Beer cans and garbage residue littered the ground and fire pit; the picnic table was reduced to splinters and ash. "It's probably destroyed. I don't know if I want to see it like that."

"It was pretty hidden. Remember? It was on that off-shoot trail thing. Maybe it's okay?"

Chuck watched Ellie bite her lower lip as she stared out the window at the garbage-strewn site and destroyed picnic table. He should have looked it up online at least before they drove out, but getting the gear together and making the other arrangements to pull together a weekend apology trip for his secret life messing up his and Ellie's special 'family of two' Mother's Day had been too much of a scramble. Still, he should have checked online. He checked everything online.

"We came all the way out here, Ellie. We can take a quick peek, see if it's trashed and then, I dunno, find another place, or camp at a hotel. Although I'm thinking a hotel would object to us toasting marshmallows in the room. Whatever you want."

Ellie looked at her brother levelly. "Okay. One peek. But I'm not looking unless you tell me it's not trashed."

"Okay."

Chuck rolled the Nerd Herder deeper into the old campground. The front-most sites were the worst damaged, but none were occupied, and the sites further in showed less abuse. Between campsites the tree-shadowed trails were well on their way to growing over, showing less and less use the further in they went. Some sites didn't seem touched at all.

He started to hope that maybe vandals had missed their family's preferred spot and that the camping weekend might be salvageable after all. Sounds of the minimal traffic on the road hushed as the little car rolled deeper in.

-

_Incoming._

-

It took a few passes to find the big site their parents had always picked. Not once in all the times they'd gone camping had it ever been occupied, even during the busiest times back in the heyday of the campground. It was secluded, easy to miss, set off from the other sites on the short spur trail. With the underbrush growing in, it was almost invisible now.

Ellie covered her eyes as Chuck eased the Nerd Herder in through the encroaching bush. The car's tires crunched on the gravel path.

"Wow," said Chuck.

"Wow, what?" Ellie winced and kept her eyes covered. "How bad is it?"

"It doesn't look trashed at all! It's just like the last time we were here! Nearly."

Ellie peered from between her fingers. "Wow."

Chuck pulled the car in and parked where Dad always had. The space had once been big enough for two full-sized RV's to park between the trees, but the encroaching foliage had constricted the space down to a cozier size. A rusty metal fire-pit sat in the center of the site, logs serving as fireside benches along two sides and a picnic table along a third. The adjoined clearing where Chuck and Ellie's tent had sat, separate from their parents', was still clear.

He remembered playing flashlight tag. He and Ellie shining their flashlights on the tent ceiling, trying to catch each other's light, giggling, being told to keep it down when it got too late. Listening to quiet conversations between Mom and Dad through the thin tent walls, their voices no more than a reassuring two-toned murmur.

Before Mom left and Dad went weird and long before Chuck had a head full of government intelligence secrets he couldn't even tell his own sister about. Happier times.

"Yeah." Ellie smiled softly, looking around the campsite. "It's worth staying a night."

"Great!" Chuck popped the back hatch and got out of the car.

Ellie got out and stretched. "You're _sure_ the Buy More doesn't mind you borrowing a Nerd Herder and taking it out of town?"

"You keep asking that. It's fine, Big Mike's cool with it. As long as I work the next... several weekends." Actually, it was a compromise. This Nerd Herder was one of the ones secretly stuffed full of government spy and tracking gear, and by wheedling permission to take it for the weekend from Big Mike (who had no idea about the modifications done to the store's vehicle), Sarah and Casey could keep track of him without watching his every move.

For once since this whole Intersect thing started, his spy life was not going to mess up his family life.

-

"'You can track me if I take the Nerd Herder.'" John Casey muttered in a mocking nasal voice, watching the campground entrance with binoculars from a spot down the road. "'You don't need to follow me and Ellie when we leave town. Just one weekend, I want _privacy_ and _family time_ and a _pony_. Wah, wah, wah.' The man's an idiot. No sense of self-preservation."

Sarah's voice was hushed in Casey's earpiece. "He hasn't lived his life like he was in constant danger, Casey, cut him some slack."

"That's the trouble with society. Slack. Everyone wanders around like they're perfectly safe. If people assumed they were in constant danger, there would be much fewer crimes committed."

"More people committed though, as they go insane from-"

"We got incoming," said Casey, straightening up in the driver's seat and watching the car turn off the road. "Big black sixties land yacht, entering the campground. Coming up the west side trail towards you."

"Maybe it's just other people looking to camp?"

"Yeah, right." Casey started up the Crown Victoria. "Keep an eye on them, Walker."

-

_Even more. A proper invasion. They don't often come so far into my territory any more. Good hunting._

-

The Winchesters were halfway around the campground loop and Sam still hadn't given up trying to convince Dean of his opinion.

"It just doesn't seem like an excessive number of missing people for the amount of time and the area, Dean. Twenty-three in ten years is about average for an area like this."

Dean rolled the Impala along the overgrown trail, peering off to the sides into empty and nearly un-vandalized campsites. "Something isn't right about it. Something worth checking out."

In the back seat something chirped.

The Winchesters exchanged a glance. Sam reached around to grab the EMF meter. The first bulb flickered faintly then went dark.

"That's nothing," Sam said.

Dean raised an eyebrow.

"Come on, Dean! We get a bigger blip from driving under a power line. Maybe we drove over a buried power cable or something."

"Could be." Dean was mildly smug. "Or it could be something more and you know it. We're here, Sam, so we're checking it out."

Sam glared down at the EMF meter. _Half a year to go. We've got the Colt again, he's got half a year left and he wants to chase missing hikers. We don't have time for this._

"Hey." Dean swatted Sam's arm and slowed the Impala from a crawl to a stop.

Sam looked up. "What?"

Dean nodded towards the little red and white car buried in the bush off a barely-seen side trail. A man and woman were setting up a tent.

"Great. Campers."

"Not for long."

Dean pulled the Impala into the overgrown off-shoot trail.

-

Sarah crouched in the brush between campsites and watched the new arrivals with binoculars. "The car's stopped near them, two guys are getting out."

"What are you waiting for, Walker? Take 'em out."

"It's possible they aren't here looking for Chuck. No one even knows he's an intelligence asset. They might just be some lost civilians."

"Trank 'em then. We'll interrogate 'em and cut 'em loose if they're just idiots."

"We can't go around tranking every person who gets near Chuck, Casey. People would notice."

"It'd make life so much easier."

"It'd compromise the security of the operation," she said firmly.

In Sarah's earpiece, Casey grunted.

"One of them is reaching in his jacket for something." Sarah dropped the binoculars and started running.

"I'm-" Casey's voice disintegrated into static. Sarah ripped off the earpiece and kept running.

-

Dean dug around in his jacket for a badge, walking with Sam towards the occupied campsite. "So, what's the story?"

"Park rangers? The place is closed down, so whoever's there has to know they're not supposed to be there."

"Sounds good to me."

"Excuse me!" bellowed Sam, waving an arm over his head.

The campers jumped at the unexpected shout. The woman, dark hair drawn up into a pony-tail, looked from the strangers coming up the trail to the curly-haired man. The man seemed scared at first, but as Sam and Dean got closer, his head tipped slightly to the side, and a half-grin formed on his face.

Sam smiled in a 'we're the authorities around here' sort of way as they got within speaking distance of the campers. "Excuse me? Hi, we're-"

"Hey..." the guy shook a finger at Sam, fully grinning now. "Hey, I know you!"

Dean froze with his hand on the leather folder that claimed he was a park ranger or a house inspector, depending which way he opened it.

"You..." Sam shook his head. "I'm sorry, what?"

"It's Sam, right? You went to Stanford!"

"Uhhh..."

"Yeah, yeah!" the guy flapped a hand in the air, thinking. "Practical composition! You did a presentation on, on, what was it... the psychological basis of modern myth or something like that."

Dean raised his eyebrows and looked at Sam.

Sam glanced between Dean and the curly-haired guy. "...I uhhhh, I think you have me confused with someone else."

"No, no, you did the presentation, I remember, you had quotes from the D&D monster manual and Legend of Zelda and still got an A. That? That was impressive!"

Dean smirked. "Really?"

"Yeah, well... games are a modern form of mythological expression."

Dean snickered. "Legend of Zelda. Dude."

The guy beamed. "You should have seen it, it was great! Sam! Wow! Sam Win-something, right?"

"...Winchester" Sam sighed.

The curly-haired guy stuck out his hand. "Chuck Bartowski!"

"Right! Bartowski, right. Uh, this is my brother, Dean."

"Hi."

"Dean. Hi." Chuck smiled broadly and shook Dean's hand.

"So, out camping with the girlfriend?" Dean inclined his head towards the dark-haired woman hovering in the campsite with a bemused expression and an armload of corn on the cob.

"What? Oh, no, this is Ellie, my sister."

"Sister, hunh?" Dean smirked in a potentially leering way and offered a hand to be shaken.

Ellie put the corn down on the picnic table next to a roll of tin foil, smiled tightly and shook Dean's hand like it was a dead rat. "His very taken and unavailable sister. Also Dr. Bartowski, thank you."

Dean managed to look hurt and scandalized. "I didn't, I would never-"

Sam pinned his brother with a level gaze.

"Crap."

"So!" enthused Chuck. "This is a wild coincidence! You guys showing up here!"

"We're barely here ourselves." Ellie muttered through a tense smile.

"Well," Sam said, turning to gesture at Dean, who took the cue and reached back into his jacket for his fake ID, "Dean here is a Fores-"

"Hi Chuck!"

Everyone looked toward the voice to see a stunning blonde woman with a bright smile walking up the trail to the Bartowskis' campsite, waving.

Dean considered the new arrival. _Hot, blonde..._ The hand the woman hadn't waved with was casually tucked behind her back. _...and apparently armed and ready to draw. Hunh._ Dean eased his empty hand out of his jacket and watched her right hand re-appear from behind her back, also empty.

Ellie looked stunned. "Sarah?"

"Hi! Sarah! What are you doing here?" Chuck and Sarah exchanged a strangely awkward hug.

_Also taken. I think. Crap._

"Well," Sarah said brightly, "you said you were going camping and it sounded like fun, so me and Casey thought it would be fun too!"

Chuck smiled an exceptionally broad smile. "And what an amazing coincidence that we ended up at the same campground!"

"The same abandoned campground." Ellie looked at Chuck and crossed her arms.

Chuck's face fell and he seemed slightly panicked. "Yeah. Um. Soooo, Casey's here too?"

"Parking the car."

"Casey, hunh?" said Dean. "Is she hot?"

A shiny black '85 Crown Victoria pulled into the campsite past the Impala with a roar. The driver's door opened and a broad, grim-looking man the same height as Sam got out, glancing between Sarah and Chuck.

Ellie gave a strained smile. "Hello, John. Welcome to the party."

"This is John Casey," introduced Chuck. "He goes by his last name."

Dean laughed awkwardly. "Ah. See, the last Casey I met was-" _a hot demonic bartender that Sam shot dead, host and all, without blinking._ "...Never mind."

"Sarah, Casey, this is Sam Winchester and his brother Dean. I know Sam from Stanford. He's okay."

Sam grinned nervously. "You're both in law enforcement, are you?"

Chuck laughed. "Oh, oh, ho, no, no they're not police or anything like that at all! No! Ha ha! Isn't that ridiculous Ellie? Sarah and Casey, cops."

Ellie continued smiling stiffly. "Yes. Ridiculous."

"Casey works with me at the Buy More. He's a green-shirt, a sales associate."

Casey's face tightened in something that might have been a smile or a wedgie.

"And I work at the Weinerlicious next door," Sarah volunteered with a quick grin.

Dean smirked. "That's the hot dog place with the little red skirts and the-" he raised his hands to chest height before Sam slapped them down.

"Dean!"

"-king-size hot dogs, Sam." Dean looked affronted. "I was gonna say king-size hot dogs."

"Whatever, we need to go get stuff from the car. 'Scuse us." Sam grabbed Dean's elbow and tugged him towards the Impala.

Sarah hooked her arm through Chuck's and smiled at Ellie. "'Scuse us a sec' please, Ellie. Chuck, we need to talk."

Casey nodded at Ellie and trailed after Chuck and Sarah.

Ellie looked from one departing group to the other in befuddlement. "Well," she said to no one, "I guess I'll just go husk some more corn."


	2. Chapter 2

"What are you doing here!" Chuck's whisper was high-pitched as he looked between his two handlers. "I can't have one weekend with my sister, _one weekend_ without the government breathing down my neck?"

Sarah twirled a finger in her blond hair, smiling and looked just far enough past Chuck's left shoulder that he could tell she was watching the Winchesters. "How well do you know this guy, Chuck?"

"Not that well. We had a class together, that's it. Why?"

"It's just that it's kind of an extreme coincidence that he's shown up here like this."

"Did you tell anyone where you were intending to camp?" Casey growled.

"Did he ever say anything about having a brother?" Sarah added.

Chuck held his hands up. "Whoa, whoa. Sam did a cool presentation in a class I was in once! I talked to him a few times before classes started! That's it! Why are you guys freaking out about this?"

"I do not 'freak out'," said Casey.

Sarah stepped closer to Chuck and put a hand on his shoulder. "This friend of yours and his brother, any chance they're involved with Fulcrum?"

"What? No! He's just some guy I knew at Stanford!"

"So's Bryce Larkin," muttered Casey. "Look how that turned out."

"You're not saying he's...." Chuck turned to Sarah. "But I'd know about him if he was a spy or something! He'd be in the Intersect and I'd flash on him, right?

Sarah glanced at Casey then back to Chuck. "We're just saying be careful. Never trust a coincidence."

"Yeah, but coincidences do happen."

Sarah and Casey looked at Chuck like he'd started speaking Klingon.

"Or not. Okay. Paranoia it is. I'll be careful, and I'll watch for anything I might flash on. You guys are gonna back off now, right? Leave me and Ellie alone?"

"Oh no." Casey's teeth gritted in a grin. "We're here to camp, we're _camping."_

"But there's an entire campground..."

"Not close enough. Whatever their intentions, these people know where you are. Out in the open, no walls, no locked doors. No people around. Easy to make disappear. Even if they were leaving and not sticking around for the Stanford Alumni slumber party, we still wouldn't get more than twenty yards away from you."

"Sarah?"

"Sorry, Chuck. Casey's right. We can't risk your security."

"Great. Thanks." Chuck nodded wryly. "That's great, guys. I feel very secure."

Casey exposed more teeth. "You're welcome."

-

"How exactly does this gesture-" Sam held his hands at chest height as though they were supporting a pair of cantaloupes, "-translate into 'King-size Hot Dog?'"

Dean grinned lewdly.

"Don't even answer that. God." Sam stalked over to the Impala.

"Ah, Weinerlicious," Dean said wistfully. "The fast food industry's answer to Hooters."

Dean pulled the Impala further into the trail, off the path to one side of the campsite and set the e-brake to keep the car secure on the slight slope.

"We aren't staying here, are we?" asked Sam.

"We're gonna have to wait until after dark for something to show up anyway... And these idiot friends of yours-"

Sam looked up at the car ceiling in frustration. "One class, Dean! One semester! I barely know the guy!"

"Whatever. Your 'Stanford acquaintance and his entourage' need to be protected from their own stupidity. We can't pull the Park Ranger dodge because they know you, and now me, and your buddy has friends who look way too officially dangerous to be working in customer service."

"But 'they're not cops'," Sam quoted.

"Yeah," Dean snorted, getting out of the Impala and watching Casey and Sarah across the campsite. "And on long road trips I like to listen to Avril Lavigne."

"We should just get out of here," Sam said, still in the passenger seat. "We shouldn't even be wasting our time."

Dean hated to pull the Deal card, but if it got Sam to agree to stick around... "You know, this could be my last chance to camp, Sammy. Really actually camp."

Sam's face turned to stone. Dean instantly regretted the underhanded tactic, even if it got Sam to stop arguing.

"No." Sam gritted out. "There's no case here, and this is a load of crap."

"C'moooooon," wheedled Dean, grinning. "It'll be great! Campfires, weenie roasts. Fun times!"

Inside the Impala, Sam crossed his arms. "I hate camping, Dean. You hate camping. We are not camping."

-

"Marshmallow?"

"Oh hell yeah!" Dean took the puffy white confection from Ellie and stuck it on the end of a sharpened stick with a grin.

The fire crackled, sending sparks up with the rising smoke. The remains of a dozen foil-roasted ears of corn were either contributing to the blaze or tucked securely into a trash bag to be packed out when the group left. Firelight glinted from the Impala's headlights, parked just off the road and pointed into the camp. Sarah and Chuck were off in search of an outhouse. Casey stood against a tree, turned sideways to the fire, sharpening a stick with a respectable buck-knife. Sam sat on a log and huffed.

"Sam?" Ellie waved the bag of marshmallows in Sam's direction.

"No. Thank you."

"C'mon Shammy, live a liggl'!" Dean said through a mouthful of sugary white marshmallow goop.

Sam glared across the fire towards his brother.

Chuck and Sarah returned to the campfire. "I hate to inform you all, but the outhouses aren't usable."

"Vandals?"

"They haven't been cleaned in over ten years." Chuck said. "Also, things have kind of... built up inside..."

"Oh, ick." Ellie grimaced.

"Yeah."

"I brought hand sanitizer, but there's only so much it'll handle."

"Guess we just make do with a designated shrubbery?" Casey muttered.

Ellie's face froze in bemused horror. " _Everyone_ is using the sanitizer. No exceptions."

"No tent?" asked Sarah, looking at the minimal gear the Winchesters had brought from the Impala.

Dean swallowed. "Naw, we like camping in the car. Never get rained out, and the tunes can't be beat. Ain't that right, Sammy?"

Sam repressed a sigh. "Yeah. It's great."

Ellie turned to Sarah. "That tent you and Casey brought, that's not big enough for both of you, is it?" The one-person tent sat on an edge of the campsite, near the Crown Victoria.

"Oh, that's mine," said Sarah.

"Is Casey a car-camper too?"

"I prefer sleeping _al fresco_ ," Casey volunteered.

Chuck looked alarmed. "Um. But-"

"Under the stars. In the open." Casey bared his teeth. "No tent."

"Ah," said Chuck. "That's a relief."

"Soooo," said Dean, reaching for another marshmallow. "You've been camping around here since you were kids, right? Got any good local campfire stories?"

 _Subtle, Dean._ Sam winced mentally.

"We haven't actually been camping here for over a decade."

"Oh. So before the place closed down?"

"Yep."

"No stories about, you know," Dean grinned gamely, "woodland monsters, or ghosts?"

"Not really, I mean there's the usual 'crazy man of the woods' stories and hookman and all that."

"Crazy man of the woods?" Dean prodded.

Chuck squinted, looking into the fire. "I forget how that one went."

"Dad wasn't big on ghost stories." Ellie's jaw tightened.

"Ah." Dean got up, dropped another chunk of wood on the fire and shifted around to sit beside Sam on the opposite side of the now flaring fire from the Bartowskis.

"No help there," murmured Dean, desultorily toasting his marshmallow.

"I still say there's no case here, Dean," Sam whispered back. The other campers had struck up a conversation about cooking. Something involving quiche and souffles. Sam did a small double-take at Casey's intense involvement in the discussion.

"One night," Dean said. "We spend the night, make sure these people don't get themselves killed. If nothing happens, I'm sure they'll chicken out of camping another day in this lovely outhouse-free campground. They'll head home in the morning, we can do a thorough check of the place after they leave. Then we'll see for sure if there's a case here or not."

"If there's no case here, then these people aren't in danger."

Dean shook his head. "No matter what might be causing the disappearances, if the twenty-three people who disappeared with no trace had any kind of violent death here..."

"...there could be a lot of angry spirits around," Sam allowed. "Yeah. Okay."

"I don't know about you, but I can do without another Thompson Lake."

"No kidding. So what are you thinking?"

"Circle the campsite with salt."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Do we have enough salt to circle the whole campsite?"

"Should. I re-stocked in Tucson. There was a sale. I'll make it work." Dean stood up. "Excuse me. Which way is the 'designated shrubbery'?"

Chuck pointed. "Let's say it's that-away."

"Avoid anything that looks poisonous," Sarah added helpfully.

"Use the sanitizer," Ellie said pointing to a large bottle set on a nearby stump.

Sam watched Casey watch Dean leave the fire-lit area. "Here, hold this," Casey growled, passing a marshmallow-toasting stick with a lethal point to Sarah. "Gotta visit the shrubbery myself. Revenge of the corn gods."

"Nice," said Chuck. "Great visual on that."

Ellie grimaced. "Thanks for sharing, John."

Sam watched Casey go as the Bartowskis turned their attention on him. He wasn't sure what Casey's intent was, but he hoped Dean was on alert.

-

_The elements are in motion. An unwise commander attacks an unfamiliar battlefield. Plenty of time to get the lay of the land. Find where the best targets lie._

-

"So, Sam!" Ellie said sociably, "Tell me about Stanford! Were you an Engineering Major like Chuck?"

Chuck picked up a stick and poked at the fire. Sarah shifted closer to him.

Sam frowned. "No, Law."

"Really?" asked Sarah. "How's that going?"

"I, uh. Never finished."

Chuck looked up from the fire. "Really?"

"Oh." Ellie glanced at Chuck and looked faintly dismayed.

Sam shifted uncomfortably on the log. "There was a fire in my apartment. My girlfriend, Jess. She died."

"Wow." Chuck dropped his fire-poking stick.

Ellie covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh my god. That's awful! I'm so sorry!"

Sarah looked away from the group, silent.

"It'll be three years ago, start of next month." He hadn't forgotten. Even though Dean's deal had shifted Sam's focus, Jess still lived in the back of his mind.

"Do you think you'll ever go back and try to pick up where you left off at Stanford?"

Sam glanced toward the Impala and Dean in the shadows. "No. Too many things have changed."

"Well," said Ellie. She scratched at her arm.

Chuck coughed, carefully not looking at Sam or the fire, which crackled in the ensuing silence.

"Uh, here." Sam dug in the bag beside him and produced a couple cans retrieved from the back of the Impala. "We brought beans."

"Great!" Ellie said with the sudden over-the-top enthusiasm of someone relieved of an awkward moment. "We've got a lot more corn on the cob, we can have a real feast tomorrow!"

"Yeah," said Chuck. "There was a roadside stand on the way down. We bought loads of corn, we're taking some back for Captain Awesome."

Ellie swatted her brother on the arm.

"Ow. I mean Devon."

"I brought a couple of those sampler take-home packs from work," Sarah offered. Sam didn't quite jump. She'd been so quiet on the opposite side of the fire Sam had nearly forgotten she was there.

Chuck brightened. "Hey! Gourmet hot dogs! Now we're talking!"

"Ooo!" said Ellie. "Are there some of those turkey smokies?"

Sarah and Ellie went off to investigate the cooler in the Crown Victoria. Sam watched Chuck watch his sister and girlfriend walk across the campsite, and didn't look away fast enough before Chuck caught him staring.

"So!" Chuck said with a nervous grin.

"Yeah! So," said Sam, smiling and slapping a bug off his knee. "This is weird, hunh?"

Chuck laughed. "You have _no_ idea."

-

Dean didn't hear or see anything, but the chatter around the campfire muffled for a second. Something had moved between the Impala and the camp. He grabbed the salt sack out of the trunk and pushed the lid almost entirely closed before turning to face the lack of sound.

"Whatcha doing, Winchester?" said Casey from the shadows.

Dean rested the sack of salt on the trunk lid, pushing it closed with a click. "Salt."

"Salt." Casey's voice was flat.

Dean narrowed his eyes toward the patch of darkness containing Casey. _As good a time for a test as any._ "Yeah, I'm gonna lay a ring of salt around the camp. Seemed the sensible thing to do, under the circumstances. Don't you think so?"

Casey's voice went from flat to incredulous. "Under what circumstances would pouring salt around be sensible?"

 _Okay, not a hunter._ "Uh. Keeps, uh. It keeps slugs from getting into the camp."

The bushes rustled. "Slugs?"

"It's damp, and slugs are gross." Dean nodded in somber agreement with himself.

Casey stepped into a patch of light cast by the campfire, one hand behind his back.

 _Armed too,_ thought Dean. _I'm so shocked._

Casey stared at Dean for an endless second before emitting a succinct "Hunh."

Dean shifted the sack of salt. _Come on, we're burning daylight. Or pre-midnight time, if any ghosts in the area happen to be traditionalists._ "If you want to, you can watch," he said sarcastically, attempting to get Casey to back off and head back to the campfire.

"Oh, I will." Casey's teeth glinted in the dark.

_Well. That's just dandy._

-

Ellie peered into the darkness. "Are they both using the same bushes?"

"Uh, I don't think so."

Sam figured that was as good an opening as he was going to get. "Hope they haven't disappeared, like all the hikers that go missing around here." _Yeah, that was subtle._

"I don't think anything could make Casey disappear." Chuck said.

Sarah coughed into her hand.

Sam was about to say 'Dean either' but it got stuck somewhere on the way out. He frowned and cleared his throat. "Seriously though, I read a thing about this area, people go missing hiking out here all the time."

"Really?"

"Yeah, there was a corporate team-building bunch that went on an adventure-hike in the backwoods area around here in July, a husband and wife back last spring..."

Ellie frowned. "Was that the bunch of executives that went missing just before that big scandal?

"The securities commission shut down their company," Sarah nodded.

Sam raised his eyebrows. "When was that?"

"Last month, September. It was in the news. After they went missing some irregularities were discovered and the whole place was audited. They found over a million dollars had been embezzled."

"Yeah," said Chuck. "They're probably on some anonymous tropical island now."

"Hunh. Guess so," Sam said.

"Hey, what about that guy..." Chuck turned to Ellie. "He went missing somewhere with his wife and three more wives and a common-law husband turned up demanding explanations. Did they go missing around here?"

Ellie poked the fire with a stick. "I don't know, maybe."

"Jeff and Lester had Google alerts for it for a month. Last May?"

"That was horrible, the way the media turned that into a sideshow." Ellie shook her head. "Those poor people, finding out they were being lied to like that, and the news sticking cameras in their faces everywhere they went. Shameful."

"Yeah, really." Sam looked into the fire. _Secrets. The two most recent disappearances had huge secrets. That could be a connection. Or a reason to disappear._

"You kids behaving over here?" called Dean, stepping into the firelight with Casey close behind him.

"You two were gone a long time," Sarah said.

"Corn." Dean shrugged.

"Never mind."

Dean watched Casey cross the clearing and leaned in to whisper to Sam. "Not hunters." He smiled at the group and reached for a marshmallow.

"Ah, ah, ah." Ellie pulled the bag out of Dean's reach. "Did you use the sanitizer?"

-

Casey retrieved his sharpened stick from Sarah.

"Well?" Sarah whispered.

Casey grimaced and resumed whittling, as though the stick needed to be armor-piercing to get through a marshmallow. "He poured salt around the camp."

"He what?"

"Poured salt. In a giant circle around the camp. Out around the cars, into the bush. A complete circle. Whole bag of it."

"Salt."

"Yup. I checked. Rock salt. He said it was to keep the slugs out."

Sarah frowned and watched Dean sanitize his hands under Ellie's supervision. "So, what? The guy has slug issues?"

Casey scowled. "It's a load of crap. I don't know what's up with these guys but something's not right."

"Maybe them showing up really is an honest coincidence, Casey. It's not like there's any explosive devices or weapons made out of salt."

Casey's face remained blank as he stared at the two men beside the fire.

"There aren't, are there?"

"I'm thinking," growled Casey.

-

Warm weather or not, the sun still went down early in October in California. The group around the campfire broke up and turned in.

In the back seat of the Impala, Sam re-examined half of the printed missing persons reports and newspaper articles. "Nothing. There's nothing in any of this about this corporate bunch being embezzlers or this guy having five spouses."

Dean flipped through the other half, flashlight tucked under his chin. "This stuff maybe only turned up after they'd been missing a while. You didn't cross check?"

Sam muttered something that was obscured by the rustling of papers.

Dean turned to look into the back seat. "Sam..."

"No, alright? I didn't cross-check because I didn't figure there was a case here."

"So check now."

"There's no wi-fi. No cell signal. No internet. We don't have Bobby's library stuffed in the trunk, and I can't get online. I have no resources to do research."

Dean frowned and set aside his half of the print-outs. "Okay, so, never mind about the research. Assuming these people all had big secrets, that's a connection."

"We only know that two of the groups did, from a second-hand vaguely remembered report these people heard on the news months ago."

"It's what we've got, Sam. We may as well go with it."

"Maybe those people disappeared because they wanted to disappear? There was some pretty heavy stuff waiting for them when they got home, maybe they decided not to go back?"

 _Can't run away from problems. You face 'em or they find you._ "I dunno. It's possible, I guess."

Sam laid down on the back seat, watching the first two lights on the EMF meter flicker and pulse silently. "So, what do you think about these people?"

"I think there's definitely something more to Sarah and Casey than they're saying. Your pal Chuck's a bit twitchy too."

"You don't think they're hunters though?"

Dean snorted. "I don't know about Sarah, but that Casey guy oozes cop vibes that are visible from outer space."

"Could also be Marine vibes, or hunter vibes."

"...maybe. He didn't know about salt."

Sam shrugged. "Maybe he's a really new hunter?"

Dean shifted in the driver's seat of the Impala. "I dunno what's up with him. He walks, talks and smells like a Fed, but he hasn't tried to bust us as two of the FBI's most wanted, even after your buddy gave him our real names. If he's a friend of Henriksen, he's a hell of a lot more subtle."

"Not that that would take much."

"Very true."

-

"They're armed." Casey muttered, laying on his bedroll on the ground, watching the Impala out the corner of his eye.

Sarah cushioned her chin on her hands, head sticking out of the emergency shelter they'd snagged from the surveillance van as supporting evidence for the ludicrous 'we're camping too' story. "Yeah, that's kind of worrisome. Who goes camping armed with hand guns? Besides us."

"Who goes camping with a '67 Impala and no tent?"

Sarah glanced at Casey. "You really think they're Fulcrum?"

"I think they're not telling us their whole story."

Sarah looked over towards the other black car lurking between the trees. "I don't think they're Fulcrum."

Casey grunted in agreement. "Fulcrum would have brought a tent."

-

Chuck hung a flashlight up inside the Bartowskis' tent. "So, camping. What do you think so far?"

"It's a great idea." Ellie said, neutrally, unrolling her sleeping bag.

"Really?"

"Sure. Some quiet family time, bonding with my brother..."

Chuck relaxed a little. "Yeah, see?"

Ellie picked up her pillow. "...and his girlfriend-"

"Uh-"

"-his coworker-" She fluffed the pillow vigorously.

"Well, that, they, um-"

"-and some random old Stanford acquaintance and _his_ brother." Ellie punched her pillow.

"Heh. Wow. Yeah." Chuck grinned. "That was _really_ random, wasn't-"

"This is just great, Chuck. I'm having a fantastic time." She threw the pillow down onto the sleeping bag with a tight smile. "I'm just surprised Morgan hasn't showed up yet."

Chuck opened his mouth then closed it.

Ellie rubbed her forehead. "Sorry. I'm sorry, Chuck. That wasn't fair of me. It's just frustrating lately, trying to spend any real family time with you."

Chuck stared up at the tent ceiling. "Yeah. I know."

"I'm also a little concerned about Sarah."

"What? Why?" Chuck crawled into his sleeping bag and adjusted his faded Atari-logo t-shirt.

Ellie sighed and sat on her sleeping bag, pulling on a pair of loose wool socks. "You don't think this whole 'tracking you down to go camping with you' thing isn't a bit stalkery?"

"Ha, no. No. Sarah's just..." _assigned by the government to watch my every move._ "Enthusiastic. About our relationship."

Ellie took down the hanging flashlight and wriggled into her sleeping bag. "There's enthusiastic and there's creepy, Chuck. I mean, Sarah's great, I love her, but being in a relationship doesn't mean devoting your entire life to one person. Balance is good."

"It's not like that, Ellie." Chuck felt a burning need to change the subject.

Ellie looked at Chuck. "We're back at this part of the conversation, aren't we?"

"Which part?"

"The 'something's going on but you won't talk to me about it so there's no sense in asking' part."

"Ah." Chuck said. "It's..."

Ellie waited for something to come after 'it's', but nothing did.

Nothing could, without endangering her, her fiance Awesome, himself, and half the free world.

"Well," Ellie patted Chuck's arm, "whenever you want to talk to me about what it _is_ like between you and Sarah, you know where I am. Okay?" Ellie rolled over and turned off the flashlight.

Chuck sighed in the darkness. "Yeah."

-

_All hiding inside their palisade, guards posted._

_When it is tactically unwise or impossible to breach the enemy's fortress, you must encourage your enemy to leave it._

_Fire in the hole._

-

Dean's wristwatch read ten past midnight. A little less than two hours before he was supposed to wake Sam up for his turn on watch.

He stared out the window at the campsite. Embers glowed in the fire pit, and both tents were dark. If whatever it was was taking people based on them having secrets, the campsite was a target-rich environment. Chuck, Casey and Sarah were up to something, and he and Sam weren't going to throw their life history out in the open to a bunch of strangers, cops or not.

In the back seat Sam snuffled and shifted in his sleep. Dean glanced in the mirror at his brother and frowned.

Sam hadn't cross-checked the victims list. He wasn't just dragging his feet on this case, he was missing things that would have supported this being a case the whole time. He figured it wasn't worth wasting time on.

 _My deadline's coming up, halfway there. No getting out of it. Sam has to get used to the idea that I'm gonna be gone. There's no hope of getting out of this deal._ Dean rubbed a hand across his face and looked away from the rear-view mirror, out his open window to the bushes beside the trail. _There can't be any hope of saving me or Sam will die._

Suddenly Dean's whole world went bright white with a very loud bang.


	3. Chapter 3

Casey rolled out of his bedroll into a crouch, flashlight and gun at the ready, ears ringing. Movement in the shadows to his right told him Walker was awake and on high alert.

Across the campsite, Chuck spilled out of the Bartowski tent with his fingers in his ears, shouting. "Ah! What the hell was that!?"

_That was an FNDD grenade. A flash-bang. No permanent damage at that range, just distraction. But distraction from what?_

Sarah gestured she was going to check on Chuck and Ellie, leaving Casey to watch the rest of the camp.

Over the ringing and squealing noises in his ears, Casey could hear some impressive profanity from the direction of the Impala. He gritted his teeth. _Winchesters._ He turned off his flashlight and moved in.

-

_Scurry, scurry, panic, regroup. Yes, I can touch you inside your fortifications. I can sap your battlements. I have secrets of my own._

-

Dean's world stayed bright and loud and strangely dizzy. That was not good in a huge way. He could feel his mouth and throat working, cursing as he fumbled out the door of the Impala, nauseous as the ground seemed to tilt underneath him. _We're under attack! What the hell? Where's Sam?_

Someone grabbed Dean's shoulders. Dean swung his arms around to break the grip, maybe get a hit in. _Blind me, deafen me, make me wanna puke, I'm still gonna kick your ass you sonofa-_

A moist breeze wafted into Dean's face as whoever had him by the shoulders yelled point-blank. Warm, corn-on-the-cob-scented breeze with a hint of bubblegum toothpaste.

Dean stopped struggling and hung on to the arms holding on to him. "Sam? Sam!"

"...here De...,"

Sam's voice faded in and out of the buzzing and squealing in Dean's ears, like an out of tune radio station. Dean blinked hard, but his vision stayed bright, with the faint after-image of the chunk of campsite he'd been looking at when the whatever-the-hell went off floating in his vision no matter which way he turned his head which was a huge mistake. Turning his head felt like riding a roller-coaster after a plate of congealed chili-fries and a twenty-sixer of rotgut scotch. He clung to Sam's arm, fighting to stay upright. "Can't see!"

"...shouting... Casey..."

"He do this? If that bastard cracked my windshield-" Dean staggered, slipped out of Sam's grip and sat heavily on the ground.

Sam's hands were on his shoulders again.

"...hear me, Dean?" Sam's voice, not louder, closer.

"Yeah. Sort of." Dean stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around.

"Whatever that was, it set off the EMF big time."

The faint differentiation between the ringing in Dean's ears and the squealing outside his ears became clearer. The EMF was going nuts inside the car. Dean's head swam. "That was Casper?"

"It's Casper, or it's a small nuclear explosion."

"Casper's got a nuke? That is _so_ not fair, dude. Ghosts should _not_ be allowed to have heavy ordnance."

The renewed huff of bubblegum/corn-scented air was more than enough to let Dean know Sam was sighing in exasperation.

-

Casey sat in the darkness with his flashlight off and gun at the ready, watching Dean trying to shake off the effects of the grenade, waiting for his own ears to fully clear. Sam knelt on the ground in front of Dean, hands on his brother's shoulders.

 _If it was them, why did Dean set off the grenade and mostly nail himself? Unless he screwed up and set it off by accident. Didn't go off inside the car or all the windows would have blown out and he'd be in a lot worse shape. Angle's wrong too._ Casey looked to the north west. _Range is too far. If he set it off, he launched it..._

_Or set it up right under my nose with a remote trigger while he was screwing around with that stupid 'anti-slug salt line'._

Casey growled.

Still didn't explain why Dean had nailed himself with it. Probably an attempt to gain trust.

_Take more than one little flash-bang to get me to trust these guys. A lot more._

-

Dean's eyes were clearing slowly. The after-image was still everywhere he looked, but he could see Sam's concerned face behind that. He could also see at least two of the not-so-happy campers running around with flashlights.

"Hey," shouted Chuck behind one of the lights, bouncing over to where Dean and Sam sat on the ground beside the Impala. "Hey, you guys all right?"

"We're fine," Dean shouted, trying to modulate his voice and failing.

"Why are you on the ground?" Also shouting. _At least my ears aren't the only ones that got screwed up._

"The flash messed up Dean's eyes, and he's a bit dizzy."

"Shut up, Sam." Dean blinked hard.

Ellie shook her head and tugged at her ears. "Is anybody hurt?"

"Dean can't see, and he's dizzy," said Chuck.

"'M fine!" Dean said, still too loudly, pulling away. "I can see fine."

"Hold still, I'm a doctor." Ellie peered into Dean's face, flicking her flashlight into his eyes and away, gauging the reaction. "You'll be okay. Your eyes are shocked by the sudden flash. Dizziness is likely from concussion to the vestibular system. Nothing permanent, it'll wear off in a bit, tell me if it doesn't though."

"See, like I said. I'm _fine."_

"What was that, anyway?" Ellie asked.

"It was, uh, sheet lightning or something," said Dean, glancing in Sam's direction. "I must have been looking square at it."

Ellie looked up at the clear, starry sky between the tree branches, reflexively pointing her flashlight upward.

"Yeah," said Casey, turning on his flashlight and stepping out of the nearby shadows. "Sheet lightning. Nothing to be scared of."

-

"That was no sheet lightning," Casey muttered to Sarah while Ellie put away the first aid kit. "That was a FNDD grenade. Between that and the interference with the earpieces, something's going on here, and I don't like it."

Sarah nodded. "You want to do re-con, find out exactly where that came from?"

"One of us needs to stay with Chuck and grill those two-"

"Well," Ellie said, flashlight bouncing as she re-crossed the campsite. "since everyone's okay and we're all up and around, I need to visit the little girl's shrubbery. Sarah, buddy system?"

"Um, sure...?"

Casey nodded. "Okay. You do the re-con. I'll grill."

"Be nice, Casey."

Casey grinned.

"Don't go outside the salt line," Dean called out, getting back to his feet.

Four flashlights swung towards Dean, blinding him for the second time that night.

He shielded his eyes with his hand. "Just... trust me."

"I'm not that worried about slugs," said Ellie, "but thank you for your concern, Dean."

-

_The dark-haired woman. She's clear compared to the others. Little dishonesties, little lies. Broken piggy banks and stifled annoyances. No real secrets. Not like the others. They all have secrets, but she's the only one they all have secrets from._

_She's perfect. They will come for her._

-

As soon as Sarah and Ellie's lights had disappeared into the bush to the north-west, Casey turned on the Winchesters. "Alright, spill. What are you jokers up to?"

"What?" Dean wiggled a finger in his ear, and stretched his face into a yawn, trying to chase away the last of the ringing.

"That had something to do with you two."

"It didn't. It's not us." Dean and Sam exchanged a complex glance before Dean continued. "But it is dangerous around here. You and your friends need to get out as soon as possible."

"Oh yeah, Why's that?"

The light from Dean's flashlight made an arc that took in the majority of the campsite. "Obviously. Things are _exploding_. That's a sign you people need to leave."

"So, you set off the grenade to scare us away from here?"

Chuck, who'd been staying out of the discussion interjected. "Grenade? What?"

Casey held a hand up. "A flash-bang. Harmless."

Dean snorted. "Harmless?"

Casey swung the light from his flashlight into Dean's face. "You can see now can't you?"

Dean blocked the light with a hand and a scowl. "Exactly. Why would me and my brother set off a grenade, which we don't have, just to incapacitate _me_."

Casey bared his teeth. "To try to gain our trust."

Dean snorted. "We don't need your trust that bad. We just need you to pack up and go home."

"Why?"

"You wouldn't believe us," Sam said.

Casey flicked his eyes toward Sam then back to Dean. "You're right. I wouldn't. Why are you here, really?"

Dean half-lowered his eyelids in a blandly innocent expression. "Camping. Just like you are."

"Right. Camping with your brother's old Stanford pal who you had no idea was camping here?"

"Absolutely."

"In a '67 Impala?"

Dean stepped closer to Casey. "Best damn car on the road."

"And in the campground?"

"It's _roomy."_ Dean said with finality. "What about you? I mean seriously, a Crown Victoria?"

Casey snarled and stepped towards Dean. Sam quietly moved into the space behind Dean, arms crossed, chin down.

"Whoa, okay, time out." Chuck moved between Casey and the Winchesters, light flashing as he formed a t-shape with the flashlight pointing towards the sky and his free hand tapping the top. "Let' all just back off on each other's vehicle preferences for a sec and, ooo, I dunno, maybe talk about this _grenade?_ If you didn't set it off and Casey didn't set it off, someone else did, right?"

Dean glared at Casey. Casey glowered.

-

"So, Sarah. Can ask a question?"

"Sure, Ellie." Sarah was out in front, flashlight scanning the trail for signs of a grenade exploding. Her own shadow from Ellie's flashlight was making close examination difficult, but a flash grenade going off would leave an unmistakable mark.

"Why'd you come here?"

"What?"

"Why'd you come out, to where me and Chuck were camping?"

Sarah shrugged and scanned the foliage. "It sounded like fun."

"There's hundreds of campgrounds, though. Why this one?" Ellie's flashlight flicked to the side before training on Sarah again. "It seems a little... clingy. Like you don't want Chuck to do anything without you."

"I'm sorry, Ellie. I know this was supposed to be family time for you and Chuck, but..." _The closer to the truth a cover story is, the more solid it will be._ "An old friend of mine passed away recently and I- I guess I couldn't handle not being near Chuck."

"Oh god, I'm so sorry! Chuck should have said something."

"I asked him not to, I didn't want to be treated like a grieving person. Like I was fragile."

The light from Ellie's flashlight bobbed. "I can understand that. Are you gonna be okay?"

"I'm fine, really. Chuck has this way of being so supportive without doing anything."

Ellie laughed. "Yeah, he does, in a way."

"I'm sorry I ruined your family camping weekend."

"No! No, god. I'm sorry. I should have known something was up." Ellie laughed. "Between you and Sam, I'm developing a real taste for my own feet on this trip."

"Speaking of Sam, can I ask you a question?"

"It's only fair," Ellie said equitably.

"How well does Chuck know this Sam guy? Has he ever mentioned him to you?"

"No, but there's a lot about Stanford he doesn't talk-" Ellie screamed suddenly, her flashlight beam swinging up to the sky before disappearing.

Sarah drew her gun and dropped into a crouch, flashlight aiming where the gun pointed. The forest area was clear of any visible threats.

Ellie was gone.

-

The scream from the woods was twinned by the EMF squealing in the Impala, car interior flickering red from the lights.

Sam and Dean looked at each other.

"Crap."

"Too late." Dean gritted, and took off running towards the scream, followed closely by Sam.

"Not so fast!" Casey stepped in front of them, aiming his flashlight at them. The slight slithery metal sound of a gun being loosened in a holster stopped Dean and Sam. "You two are staying right here where I can see you."

-

"Ellie?!" Sarah called out, gun still ready.

"Ow. I'm here," came Ellie's muffled voice. "I fell. I didn't see it, there was a hole."

_A hole?_

Sarah found the hole immediately and shone her light in. "Ellie? Are you okay?" she said, tucking her gun away.

"I'm okay, just bruises, maybe a mild sprain." Ellie's voice drifted from below. Deep in the hole her flashlight flickered around, revealing a small cave, then pointed up toward Sarah. "I don't think I can climb back up though. The walls curve...."

Light played around the underground chamber again, and through the hole Sarah could see there was no slope to climb out easily.

"It's like a cathedral roof, arching," Ellie said. "Don't get too close to the hole, Sarah. The ground must really be thin around there."

"I'll go get a rope."

"But if the ground's unstable, it could be dangerous. There's a cave entrance, Chuck should remember where it is. This is probably connected to those. There's a crevice in the wall down here."

"Okay, just stay right there. Don't move!"

"Not planning on it." Ellie's light flickered back down at the walls again.

Sarah shone her flashlight around the area and snapped several nearby branches so they were pointing down towards the hole. She was certain there hadn't been a hole there before Ellie went through. Sarah had walked right over the spot herself, she was sure of it; Ellie had been walking behind her. She searched her memory, but couldn't recall the forest floor there being any different than the surrounding ground. If it had been a trap, it had been a very well hidden one to escape her notice.

 _Maybe there wasn't a hole. Could just be that the ground_ is _really thin there. Not everything is a trap._

Sarah ran back towards the campsite.

-

_I have her. She's my secret now. Only a matter of time and the rest will follow._

-

Ellie shook her flashlight but it kept flickering. Must have been damaged in the fall. She found a wall of the cave and sat with her back to it, then turned the flashlight off. No sense in wasting the batteries; she'd turn it back on when Sarah came back with some rope or whatever. Not like there was anything to see in here anyway. Rock. Walls. Dirt. Roots. Bugs.

_Good thing I'm not claustrophobic. Or myctophobic. Darkness doesn't bother me at all. I'm not afraid._

Something scurried over the toe of her sneaker in the darkness.

"Gahh!" She flicked the flashlight on in time to see something skitter into the crevice in the wall.

_Startled, yes. Not phobic._

Her flashlight flickered and died again. She sighed and turned it off.

 _Camping. Such fun. No idea why we don't do it more often._ Ellie rotated her ankle. _Yeah, that's a mild sprain. Stay off it, ice packs..._

"It's cool in this cave though, that should help keep any swelling down."

Talking to herself. She laughed. There was no echo, like the walls were eating her voice. _Oh come on! That's nonsense. It's just dark._

-

"Your friends are in trouble out there!" Sam said, raising his hands a little, watching Chuck fidgeting behind Casey and aiming his flashlight out into the dark woods. Casey hadn't showed a gun yet, but some sounds were unmistakable.

"Walker can handle anything," Casey growled.

"Walker, hunh?" Dean jerked his chin up. "She go by her last name too?"

"What about Ellie?" Sam asked, still watching Chuck. "Someone screamed, you heard it."

Chuck made an indecipherable noise and took off into the woods, light swinging crazily over bushes. "Ellie! Sarah!"

"Bartowski! Dammit!" Casey's light spun out of the Winchesters' faces as he turned and ran after Chuck.

They didn't get far before they saw one light returning. Chuck skidded on the trail as he nearly ran past.

"Sarah! What happened!"

"Ellie fell down a hole!"

"What?" squawked Chuck.

"What?" Dean said flatly, glancing at Sam.

Sam frowned and looked back towards the campsite and the EMF in the Impala. _It went off. Something more happened than someone falling in a hole._

"I swear, I didn't see it, but there was this hole-"

"Is she okay?" asked Chuck, frantic.

"Did you go outside the salt line?" Dean asked, expression intense.

"Honestly, Dean! I guarantee you this has nothing to do with slugs!"

"Sarah," Chuck said, getting between Sarah and Dean. "Is Ellie okay?!"

"She said she's fine. She's in an underground cave. We'll need rope to get her out."

"There's rope in my car," Dean and Casey said simultaneously. They exchanged a mutual glare.

"There's a possibility the ground isn't stable enough to hold. Ellie said that there's a cave entrance nearby and that it might connect up."

"Oh! I know where that is! Ellie and me found it when we were kids. Never went in because our parents were-" Chuck flapped his hands and shook his head with a frown. "Never mind. I know where it is! Come on!" He turned to run back to the campsite.

Casey grabbed Chuck's shoulder as he ran past. "Hold up, Chuck."

"Tell you what," Dean said, "you guys discuss things out here in the bush, me and Sam'll go back to the campsite, get a rope and come back."

"No." Casey's light nailed them like a spotlight at a maximum security prison. "You two are staying where we can see you."

"They didn't push Ellie into the hole Casey," Chuck said, shrugging out from under Casey's hand. "They're trying to help."

" _Thank_ you," said Dean, rolling his eyes.

Casey and Sarah exchanged a glance.

Sam spoke up. "How about we all go back to camp, gear up, and figure out what we're doing to rescue Ellie?"

Nobody argued with that.

-

The discussion back at the camp only took as long as locating rope. Sarah knew where the hole was, Chuck knew where the cave entrance was.

"I'm with Chuck, and you two are going one way or the other. Figure it out yourselves," Casey said before calling Sarah into a conference out of the Winchester's earshot.

"Rock, paper, scissors?" Dean suggested, pulling a bundle of thick rope from the depths of the Impala's trunk.

Sam shook his head. "I'll go to the cave."

"Fine by me. You do some geek-boy bonding with Chuck and his pet Terminator there," Dean hoisted the rope onto his shoulder. "I'll go with the hot chick to see if we can rescue the other hot chick."

"Dean..."

"What? I'm just appreciating the view while I still have the chance."

Sam's jaw clenched. "Take the EMF meter with you."

-

Water dripped. It sounded too far away to be in the little underground pocket with her. A cool, fungusy breeze came from somewhere.

Ellie knew were caves around here, even though she'd never been in them. She remembered the cave entrance she and Chuck had found on one of the last times they'd come here. It might have been the last time, now that she thought about it. That wasn't important.

She hoped this cave-pocket connected to that cave. The ground above was really thin for her to have broken through, it would be safer for them to try to get to her through the cave system.

Ellie stared up towards the roof, and the hole she'd fallen through, but couldn't see any differentiation in the light. No sky, no stars.

"It's under the trees. They must be blocking the light from the moon. Still, you'd think it wouldn't be that dark out."

 _Talking to yourself again?_ She sighed and thought back to the optic sections of her medical training. _Night vision, night vision... Rhodopsin in the eye regenerates within five or ten minutes. Half an hour for full recovery, but I should be able to see something other than pitch black by now..._

Something glimmered in the corner of her eye and Ellie looked down from the ceiling toward the crevice she'd seen before. Light glowed faintly, and sounds that might have been distant voices.

_There wasn't a light there before. Funny. Maybe they've already found the way in, coming through the tunnels to find me? This cave must be really close to that entrance._

"I'm here!" she shouted. Her voice still didn't echo.

-

Dean trailed after Sarah through the woods, flashlight tracing the line of white crystals paralleling the trail. _We're still inside the salt line. So was that EMF burst when the grenade went off. What the hell?_

"Through here." Sarah called.

"Right behind you." It was more than possible the salt-line had been broken. Animals, damp patches... Dean had been hoping it would hold for the night and give him and Sam a chance to clear out these people in the morning. _Yeah. When have we ever been that lucky?_

"Here! I marked it. It's right..." Sarah crouched down and felt at the smooth ground underneath three broken branches. "It's gone."

Dean shone his flashlight on the area and the surrounding ground. "Maybe you got turned around in the dark. It hap-"

"No." Sarah snapped. "I know what I'm doing. The hole was right here, now it's not. Some kind of trap door or something." Sarah pulled a knife out of her boot and started cutting at the loamy turf.

Dean squatted next to Sarah, pulling out the EMF meter and holding it over the patch of ground. All five lights lit up and the meter pinned at maximum.

Dean grimaced. "Yeah. Or something."

_Casper's underground. Line of salt on the surface won't do jack all, unbroken or not. Perfect._

"What's that?" asked Sarah, her voice a mix of studied innocence and wary knowing.

"It's-" Dean sighed. "It's an EMF meter. Detects electromagnetic frequencies."

"Why?" Sarah's light aimed into Dean's face. He was getting tired of that.

Dean mentally shrugged. "Well, see, me and my brother, we hunt ghosts. Among other things."

"You think what's going on out here is being caused by a ghost?" Sarah's voice was flat and unamused.

"Yep." Dean nodded.

There was silence behind Sarah's flashlight, followed by an incredulous snort, her light flicking away to examine another section of ground.

_That went well._

-

Sam spotted the cave entrance before Chuck or Casey did. The deep, shifting shadows of the rock formation weren't what made Sam run ahead, spotlighted by a light he assumed was Casey's. A sigil stood out against the rock wall. Sam squatted for a closer look. _Paint. Not blood. That's a novelty._

"There it is!" came Chuck's voice as he thrashed through the bush and into the small clearing near the cave entrance.

"Shouldn't run ahead like that, Winchester," growled Casey, looming over Sam. "It's enough to make a guy paranoid. Twitchy."

Sam rolled his eyes and stood up, negating Casey's loom-factor by making their heights equal. "How about you let me know if there's anything me and Dean do that _doesn't_ make you twitchy?"

Casey snorted something that might have been a laugh.

Chuck was looking over the cave entrance. "I remember because there was a thing painted on the wall that looked kind of like the Transformers logo."

Sam tilted his head and pointed. "That thing looks like a Transformers logo?"

"Yeah! Well, it did when I was a kid, now it... kind of..." Chuck's voice trailed off.

Sam looked over at Chuck to see his eyelids half-closed and fluttering rapidly. _What the hell?_

-

_This one. This one is so full of secrets.... the world should bend around him from the weight of them. But he doesn't truly know what he knows. He's an ammo case. The shell of the warhead._

_Him. I need him. I need his secrets. With his secrets I can make them all pay._

-

Chuck's eyes re-focused. "Toucan Keep," he gasped, or at least that's what it sounded like to Sam.

"What?" Sam stared at Chuck, shining the flashlight in his face. "Are you all right?" he asked with a kind of slow dawning dread. _That looked kind of like a vision..._

"He's fine," said Casey.

Chuck shielded his eyes from the light and looked significantly in Casey's direction. "I, uh. Yeah. Fine. I'm fine. Headache."

"Headache." Sam said the word like it was a piece of a puzzle he didn't want to solve.

"I'm sure Chuck's fine, he's just worried about his sister. We should head back to camp."

"Naw, you two go back. I can stay here, take a look around..." _Get a better look at that symbol._

"Why don't we all go back to the camp so Chuck can get some aspirin." Casey stepped up into the light next to Chuck.

"Yeah, um. I, I, painkillers! Right! Yeah. It's uh, it's uh...." Chuck turned, careened off Casey and ran back the way they'd come, hollering, "I gotta go find Sarah!"

Casey emitted a displeased grunt and turned to follow but glared back at Sam.

Sam shrugged blandly. "Just gotta check out a few things, I'll be right there."

Teeth gritted, Casey tore off after Chuck's bouncing flashlight for the second time that night.

What was going on here? Sam shifted his flashlight downward, aiming toward the cave again and the symbol on the wall.

 _Aramaic? Babylonian?_ Didn't look demonic, but it was hard to tell. Darkness and weathering of the symbol were not helping.

_If whatever's doing this is a ghost, that's one thing. If it's a demon, that's something else entirely. We need more info; for starters, what this symbol is._

Sam fished out his phone, and took a picture. The detail would show up better in the morning, but the little camera-phone didn't do a bad job. _Now, if there was wi-fi, I could look this up on the laptop. Or if there was a cell signal out here, I could send this to Bobby so he could look it up. Whenever he checked his email._

Sam sighed. _No more cases without wi-fi. This is nuts._

_I hate camping._

Sam stuck the phone back into his pocket, pulled out his salt flask and poured a precautionary line across the cave entrance before following Chuck and Casey back to camp.

-

All the rules of being lost said stay put, let your searchers come get you. That was ridiculous when she could hear them and even see their lights. Besides, between the cool rock she was sitting on and the dripping sounds it was getting to the point where if she didn't get up and move, she was going to have to pee again.

She got to her feet, testing her ankle and finding it twinged, but hurt less than she'd thought it might. Picking her way carefully along the uneven cave floor, she stopped when she got to the crevice. The faint light waxed and waned, like moving flashlights, and she thought she could almost make out a word here and there. She looked back at the black cave roof.

_What if they're coming with a rope too? They'll come here and I'll have disappeared._

Suddenly thinking of Sam's earnest face over the campfire, talking about people going missing, she shivered.

"Don't be ridiculous," she chided herself. "It's just campfire stories."

Ellie stooped and felt around on the floor, gathering loose rocks and making an arrow-shape, pointing towards the lit crevice.

When she was done, she stood back and looked at the arrow, standing out against the cave floor, the slight shifting light from the tunnel making the small stones grow shadows.

Ellie nodded. "There. Just in case." She squeezed through the crevice, heading towards the light and voices.

"I'm here! I'm coming!"

-

_Even hidden, she hides nothing. She leaves a mark so she can be found. Astounding. She acquires a secret and gives it away._

The cave floor shuddered, shivering like the back of a stretching cat, or like a small explosion had gone off miles away. The stones danced out of their carefully piled arrow-shape and scattered across the floor.

_She has no secrets. But I do._


	4. Chapter 4

Chuck skidded to a stop in the center of the campsite, flashlight aiming wildly at Sarah and Dean. "Did you find Ellie?"

Dean glanced at Sarah. "No, we couldn't find the-"

"We've gotta talk," Casey growled, snagging Chuck by the shoulder and Sarah by the elbow, towing them towards his car. "'Scuse us."

"Okay then," Dean said, watching them go and drifting towards where Sam's flashlight bobbed, trailing in from the cave entrance.

Sam was staring across the campsite at the barely-illuminated back of Chuck's head like he wanted to see through it.

"What's up?"

"Chuck, he-" Sam shook his head, frowning. "Nothing."

"What, Sam?"

"Back at the cave, he looked like he had a vision. Like the things I used to get."

Dean glanced at the three-way discussion across the clearing without changing his flashlight's aim. "If Chuck was one of the Yellow Eyed Demon's bunch, he should have been at Cold Oaks though, right?"

"Right..." Sam shook his head. "Might be nothing, but it happened right when he saw a symbol on the cave entrance."

"What kind of symbol?"

Sam pursed his lips in frustration. "I couldn't tell. Could be graffiti, could be demonic, but from Chuck's reaction to it I'd say it's not nothing."

"So you think Chuck knows something and isn't sharing with the group?"

"Not our part of the group anyway." Sam watched the heated yet hushed discussion taking place across the campsite in a pool of light from three flashlights. "He said... something. 'Toucan Keep'."

"'Toucan Keep?' Sounds kind of piratey. Unless Casper has a serious thing for Froot Loops."

"You know, I'm thinking maybe Chuck didn't say 'Toucan Keep' but 'Two Can Keep'"

Dean's flashlight swung up to Sam's face. "He didn't say 'Toucan' but he said 'Toucan'? You're starting to hurt my brain, Sam."

"No, 'Two Can'." Sam paused significantly between the words. "As in 'Two can keep a secret if one is dead.' I mean if the thing about our vics having big secrets is right..."

"...maybe this ghost, or demon, has a hang-up about keeping secrets."

"It finds people with secrets and... keeps them."

"Hunh. That sounds grim."

Sam nodded towards Dean. "What did you find? Obviously not Chuck's sister."

"A disappearing hole and a schwackload of EMF. _Inside_ the salt line."

"Ghost's underground," Sam nodded with a grimace. "That is, if it is a ghost and not a demon."

"With the amount of EMF, I'd say ghost, and a pretty pissed off one. Either way, we're screwed."

"I salted the cave entrance, but that's not gonna do much good."

"Not if he can pop a hole out anywhere, not to mention any pre-existing vents and holes. As long as he doesn't come out inside the salt circle himself, he can do anything he wants."

"Including set off grenades."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Great. Where the hell does a ghost get grenades anyway?"

-

"Alright, Chuck, talk." Casey hissed when they were far enough away from the Winchesters not to be overheard.

Sarah flicked her flashlight from Chuck to Casey and back again. "What's going on?"

"I flashed at the cave. Sarah, we have to get Ellie out of there!"

"Flashed on what?"

"Antoine Kupferberg. Arms dealer. There's a symbol painted at the cave entrance, it's his-" Chuck waggled a frantic hand in the air. "-trademark, calling-card thing."

"Kupferberg." Sarah nodded. "I've heard of this guy. He's a demolitions expert, traded in secrets too. He's here?"

"He's got a bunker he calls 'Two Can Keep' built into the cave system." Chuck's voice was tight with suppressed panic.

"We knew he had one somewhere," Casey growled softly.

"We need to get Ellie out of there now!"

Casey bared his teeth and whispered. "Chill, Bartowski."

-

"My sister's fallen into the lair of a lunatic arms dealer and you want me to _chill?!"_ Chuck's strained voice carried across the campsite.

Silence fell.

Dean resisted the urge to shout 'Don't worry, we totally didn't hear that' across the campsite. Barely. "And that's what I think," he said instead, speaking in a hushed, neutral tone and turning more towards Sam.

"So you think if we continue talking quietly in an undisturbed and unexcited manner, they'll think we didn't hear that?" Sam said with a tone of mild contemplation.

"Yes, Sam, I do believe that that might be the case." Dean murmured back as though ordering an imported beer. "Let's move slightly in a random neutral direction."

The Winchesters took a few steps towards the nose of the Impala. Dean shone his flashlight at one of the tires. Across the campsite the murmured conversation started up again.

"Lunatic arms dealer. That's a new one."

"It would explain the grenade. Maybe not our kind of gig after all?"

"Disappearing holes and EMF? He's a ghost or possessed."

"You're sure you had the right place and the hole wasn't there?"

Dean glanced over to where Sarah's blonde hair caught the light from the three-flashlight conference. "I don't know what Sarah _really_ does as a day job, but she's sharp and she's thorough. There is no way we had the wrong spot."

"Maybe it was a trap door, and now it's held shut with electromagnets?"

Dean paused, then shook his head. "That is an awesome thought, but no. Between the two of us we dug down far enough to find a trap door if there was one."

"Disappearing people, disappearing holes."

"And Ellie's in an arms dealer's Wonderland."

-

Casey looked away from the Winchesters and back at Chuck. "You're lucky they didn't hear that. So are they. Keep your voice down, Bartowski."

"Keep my-!"

Sarah held onto Chuck's forearms and looked in his eyes. "Chuck, panicking will not help."

"But Ellie-!"

"The more we know, the more it will help Ellie," Sarah said. "Was there anything else?"

"That's all the flash gave me!"

Casey grunted. "Surprised it gave you anything. Kupferberg's not only an absolute recluse, he's dead."

"What?"

"He disappeared over a decade ago. Seems he wasn't too discriminating about who he traded secrets to or where he got them. It was assumed that one of his clients found out he'd sold their intel and ganked him."

"You think he just holed up in northern California?" Sarah mused.

"Maybe." Casey dug out his cell phone and held it up and "No signal, even on my phone."

"Could Kupferberg have a signal jammer running?"

"More than likely. It would explain the disruption in the earpieces and the EMF the Winchesters are detecting, though not why they have an EMF meter in the first place." Casey glanced sidelong at the pool of light by the Impala.

"I wouldn't worry about that," Sarah muttered.

"Can we stop with the talking and go rescue my sister now please?" whispered Chuck.

"We're leaving." Casey said abruptly.

"What?"

"It's too risky for you to be here. We'll call General Beckman as soon as we get a signal and bring in a squad to lock it down and clean up."

"We can't leave!" Chuck's eyes shot back and forth between Sarah and Casey. "What about Ellie?"

"Ellie is not our priority," stated Casey.

"She's my sister!"

"You're the asset, Chuck, not her."

"There is no way I am leaving here without my sister."

Casey grimaced towards Sarah for support.

Sarah glanced between the two of them. "I agree with Chuck, we can't leave Ellie down there."

" _Thank you_ , Sarah." Chuck crossed his arms and turned toward Casey.

"Fine," Casey gritted. "I'll go take the Crown Vic out to where I can get a cell signal, call it in. Since you're so determined to play Lassie, Walker, you can babysit the Intersect and his sister and keep an eye on the Winchesters. Keep them out of the caves. If they're involved in this, they're probably allied with Kupferberg."

-

"We got movement," said Sam, slapping Dean in the chest as Casey's light separated from the rest and headed towards his car.

"Hey, where're you going?" Dean called across the campsite.

"Wouldn't you like to know," Casey shouted back.

"He's gonna drive out and try to get a cell phone signal," said Chuck, making a little loop motion in the air with his finger.

Casey snarled.

"Great. I'm going with you," Dean shouted at Casey.

Sam grabbed Dean's arm and pulled him into whispering range. "What? Why?"

"Sam, this guy has no clue about ghosts or anything like ghosts. Plus he has secrets out the wazoo. He'll get in his car and never be seen again if he goes alone. We can't let any of these people wander off by themselves."

"Yeah, Dean." Casey called from the other side of the campsite, pronouncing Dean's name with his teeth clenching. "Come with me. You and I can have a nice chat."

"See?" Dean turned to Sam, grinning. "All fine."

"Dean, you-"

"No, Sam, you stay here. Watch these guys, make sure no one does anything stupid. Particularly Chuck, since it's his sister that's missing. No one goes into the caves until we're sure what we're up against."

Sam reached into a pocket. "Here, take my phone. I got a picture of the symbol, send it to Bobby."

With a raised eyebrow, Dean took the phone and tucked it into his pocket along with the EMF. "You don't seriously think we're going to get a signal, do you?"

Sam shrugged. "Worth a shot. Like you said, we need to know what we're up against."

"Ghost of a lunatic arms-dealer or demon-ridden lunatic arms-dealer."

"Or plain old vanilla lunatic arms-dealer."

"Fun times." Dean jogged across the campsite to Casey's car.

-

The tunnel Ellie was following got wider and branched several times. She kept calling out and following the light, marking each branch she took with an arrow of stones. Her throat was getting hoarse. _Why don't they hear me? Cave acoustics can't be that bad._

Behind her, the floor rippled away any trace she'd ever been there.

-

Sam, Sarah and Chuck watched as Casey backed the Crown Victoria down the offshoot trail and onto the main path.

As soon as the tail lights had gone around a corner, Chuck clapped his hands together. "Great, so we're going to the cave to rescue Ellie now, right?"

"No," said Sarah.

"What, but you-"

"Casey's right, it's too dangerous."

"Ellie's stuck in a cave with some gun-running psycho!"

"Chuck!" Sarah shot a glance at Sam.

Sam smiled wryly and half-shrugged. "Already knew that part."

Sarah glared.

"I'm getting her out with or without your help," Chuck insisted, then clarified, "'With' would be a lot less likely to get me killed and have a much better chance of success. So what I'm saying is I would really appreciate your help."

"I'm sorry, Chuck, but Casey is right. You can't go into the caves."

Sam spoke up. "I gotta admit, I agree with Chuck, Sarah. If it was my brother there'd be no stopping me. How about this? I go find your sister for you, Chuck, you and Sarah stay here."

"Stay out of this, Sam. Chuck, you can't, and I can't leave you here alone and go myself," she glanced at Sam again. "You know why."

Chuck seemed to deflate with Sarah's every word. "Yeah, I guess you're right, we can't- Oh my god!" He pointed behind Sarah and Sam, alarmed.

Sam turned flashlight ready, reaching into his jacket. Beside him he saw Sarah draw her gun from somewhere behind her back and point it, not behind them, but at him. His hand froze inside his jacket.

Nothing was behind them. Feet thudded away as Chuck ran towards the cave.

"Dammit!" Sarah glared at Sam, holding him at gunpoint and spotlighted by her flashlight. "Ease whatever it is you're intending to draw out, and place it on the ground."

"You really don't work at a hot-dog stand, do you?" Sam asked rhetorically, following her instructions.

Sarah did a double take at the silver flask in Sam's hand. "What's that?"

"Holy Water."

Sarah blinked.

"I'm out of salt, and I thought it might be a demon?" Sam shrugged again.

Sarah shook her head. "...You and your brother are insane." She tucked her gun back into her waistband and turned to follow Chuck.

"Hold up, I'm coming too."

"No, you aren't."

"Look, I know you think I'm nuts, but I know where the cave mouth is. You need me."

Sarah looked up the trail Chuck had taken. His light was nowhere to be seen. She turned back to Sam. "All right, move it."

"I'm gonna get a shotgun out of the car first, so don't shoot me. It's loaded with rock salt rounds, alright?"

"Just hurry."

-

Ellie turned a corner into a widening of the tunnel. There was a small cot, a shelf of canned goods and stacks of olive green cases. One case stood open, full of glowsticks, all except two at the far end of the case were unlit. A trickle of water seeped down the wall into an overflowing basin and out through a crack at the base of the wall, making a low burbling sound as it followed its course.

This was the light and sound she'd been following. Not searchers. Someone _lived_ here.

Ellie cleared her throat. "H- hello? Anyone home?"

Aside from the water dripping into the basin and her own breathing, there was no sound. It was warm, sort of cozy for a damp cave full of big, military-looking boxes.

_Probably scavenged from some base somewhere, reused for storage. They are really good boxes after all. Hinged lids and everything._

Ellie lifted the lid of the one nearest her. More weapons than she'd seen in any of Chuck's video games glinted up at her. She dropped the lid and skittered backwards. "Wow. Oh, wow. That's a lot of guns."

Yes, obviously someone was living here. Someone who really liked guns. That was a very scary thought.

Ellie looked to the ceiling and addressed the empty room.

"I'm sorry. If there's anyone here. I'm-" she lunged forward and snagged a glowstick. "I'll just leave. Okay?"

She snapped the glowstick into life, turned and retreated down the tunnel she'd just come up.

 _Get back to the cave I fell into. Never should have left it._ She started looking for her most recent stone arrow.

-

_A secret is like a bomb. Death waiting to happen. Heavy as lead, deadly as poison, toxic as radiation. They yearn to be free, to become the death they were meant to be._

_A secret is given away, it becomes death. I keep them, hidden, controlled. All the secrets that have become death._

_They will give their secrets to her. She will enable their death. And I will keep them all._

_It will be beautiful._

-

The ride in the Crown Victoria was one of the least comfortable Dean had ever been on, and not just because it was an old, mostly unconverted cop car. The security cage was even still set up around the back seat. Casey had to be some kind of law enforcement. Either that or he had damn kinky hobbies that Dean did not need to know about.

"So, what do you think is going on?" Dean asked brightly after a few minutes of tense silence.

Casey looked sideways at Dean. "I think that my co-worker's sister fell down a hole."

"I hear your, uh, _co-worker_ had a bit of an incident at the entrance to the caves."

Casey's eyes locked to the front, headlights illuminating shrubbery and ruts. "He's excitable. And strange. Says weird things all the time."

"Things like 'Two Can Keep'?"

Casey's eyes snapped to the right.

"Sam told me."

"Yeah, weird stuff. Doesn't mean anything. He plays too many video games."

"Right." The car bounced down the trail in silence for a while before Dean spoke again. "So. Ellie fell in a hard-to-find hole, Chuck says weird things sometimes and this campground has grenades going off every once in a while."

"You'd know more about that than I would," gritted Casey.

"You really think so?"

"I do." Casey flashed a great deal of teeth. "I also think as soon as we get a cellphone signal you and your brother-"

The EMF meter in Dean's lap squealed loudly, all the lights lighting up. Casey reflexively jerked the steering wheel but didn't go off the trail.

Dean looked out the window. "I don't think getting a cell signal is going to happen any time soon."

Casey stopped the car, its headlights reflecting off the Impala's taillights, half-hidden up the bushy trail. They were back at the campsite.

 _Friggin' ghost,_ thought Dean. _He's got the campground in lockdown. No one's going anywhere until he gets what he wants._

"Hunh. Stupid civilian campground design," Casey snarled, starting to roll forward again.

"Whoa, whoa, hold up." Dean stuffed Sam's cellphone and the EMF into pockets.

"What?"

"Turn off the headlights for a sec."

Frowning, Casey looked towards Dean.

"Please?"

Casey grunted and switched off the lights. The campsite was pitch black.

Dean's stomach fell. "There's no flashlights. They're gone." He had the door open and flashlight out, running up the trail.

The lights on the Crown Victoria flicked back on and the car roared up behind Dean and stopped. The headlights illuminated the whole camp better than Dean's flashlight could. No signs of struggle, no holes, no sign of anyone. They'd disappeared.

 _No, no, not again._ "Sam!" called Dean.

Over the sound of the engine behind him he heard a door slam and a gun being cocked. Dean turned to see Casey silhouetted in the headlights of his car in an unmistakable stance.

"Where are they, Dean?"

-

After Sam pulled the shotgun loaded with salt out of the Impala and they both followed Chuck into the caves, Sarah was very quiet. Too quiet. A 'thinking things that might make her feel she needed to shoot him' sort of quiet.

Having her behind him with a gun was also not helping. A few hundred yards of cautious advancing later, she spoke.

"If this is all some kind of stupid, elaborate grift on the Bartowskis, a con to swindle them, I will skin you alive. You and your brother."

"What?!" Sam glanced back over his shoulder. "No! No! We help people!"

Sarah snorted. "Starting with yourselves. Trust me, I know all the rationalizations."

"That's not it."

"So if I looked 'Sam and Dean Winchester' up in a law enforcement database, all I'd find a speeding ticket or two?"

"Uh." Sam thought of the list of charges Henriksen had listed off at their last meeting. Plus escaping from the Green River County jail, and that whole general 'wanted by the FBI' thing. "No."

"Why am I not surprised?"

Sam huffed. "It's, it's complicated."

"I can handle complicated, Sam Winchester. If that is your real name."

"It is actually," Sam said in bemusement. "Look, just trust me, all right?"

"Give me a reason to."

Sam shone his flashlight around a corner before continuing along the tunnel. "I'm pretty sure you know the person who built this bunker isn't me or my brother."

Sarah shrugged. "He could be your dad. A cozy little family arms-dealing business?"

"Heh. Uh. No. Not arms dealing. We're really just here to help."

"What's your interest in Chuck?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "I didn't even know he was here, alright? I barely remember him from one class at Stanford. Aside from making sure you all get out of here safe, me and Dean have no interest in any of you."

"Well, that's fine then. Make sure it stays that way."

-

Ellie stood in the shadows of one of the tunnels leading back into the room with the cot and all the guns, ankle throbbing, frustrated nearly to tears. Either she'd managed to kick the arrows she'd left when she passed them, or she'd misjudged how easy they were to spot in the faint light. She'd gone into each tunnel, looking, in case she'd gotten turned around and taken the wrong one, but nowhere could she find any of the arrows she'd left.

Since wandering around in an unfamiliar cave system was a kind of stupid that Ellie Bartowski was not meant to be, she came back to the room with the cot. It was still empty, glow coming from the glowsticks, gun cases undisturbed.

She cleared her throat. "Hello, it's me again. If there's anyone here, I really don't mean any harm. I'm just lost. I'm- I'm going to stay here until..."

How and when was anyone going to find her here?

_Don't panic. Stay calm. Do what you can do, don't worry about the rest._

Ellie limped to the cot and sat on it, elevating her ankle which had begun complaining about all the wandering around the tunnels. She felt a little like Goldilocks hanging out at the three bears' place. If the bears were heavily armed.

_Where the heck am I?_

-

In the glare of Casey's headlights Dean looked down at the red dot in the center of his chest. "Oh come _on!_ We don't have time for this!"

"Hands in the air where I can see them, Winchester."

Dean raised his hands with an exasperated sigh. "I don't know what your thing is with this Chuck guy. Frankly I don't care."

"You'd like us to think that wouldn't you?" Casey pointed his gun at Dean. The red dot moved up to hover between Dean's eyebrows. "Who are you working for, where'd your partner take Chuck and Sarah, and what the hell is up with all the salt?"

"We're not working for anyone, 'Agent Bauer', and I want to find out where they all went as much as you do. I figure one way or another, they're all down in the caves."

"One way or another, hunh?"

"Either they went down to get Chuck's sister, or something took 'em down."

"Some _thing?"_

"Look. You and I both know some kinda weird crap is going on here."

"Yeah, weird crap you and your brother are causing somehow."

Dean debated telling Casey the truth, but that would probably go less well than it had with Sarah. _Sarah._ "You know Sarah, right?"

"What?"

Dean vaguely waved his upraised hands. "I mean you know her as more than just the gorgeous hot-dog-selling girlfriend of a co-worker."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Casey's silhouette shifted slightly and the red dot steadied.

"Okay, okay! All I'm saying is, Sarah and Ellie went out in the woods. Ellie fell into a hole Sarah didn't notice until Ellie fell in it. When we went back out there to the place she'd marked, the hole was _gone._ From all that you know about Sarah, about how perceptive and diligent she is, does that make _any_ sense to you?"

Casey stood silently in the Crown Victoria's headlights.

Hands still raised palms out, and trying not to get blinded by the red targeting light of the gun pointed between his eyes, Dean tipped his chin down and glared at Casey. "Now, are you gonna work _with_ me so we can get my brother and your friends back, or do I have to waste my time kicking your ass before I go do it myself?"

For a hanging moment Dean thought he might have pushed the wrong buttons and Casey was going to ventilate Dean's brain six months before the hellhounds came to claim him.

"Hunh," Casey grunted and lowered his weapon. "Okay. But you owe my car an apology."

-

When Chuck was deep in the tunnels, moving as fast as he could over the rough ground and scanning ahead with his flashlight, he had a moment of panic.

_Nothing to worry about, just the bunker of a notorious arms dealer. No need to freak out. He probably loves having unannounced guests. Serves cake and ice cream._

A loose pebble fell from where he'd grabbed at the wall. He froze, hyperventilating as it clattered down behind him.

_Just a rock. Just a noise. Oh god, I'm gonna get killed._

Chuck took a deep breath. Ellie was down here somewhere. He kept going.

He got another few hundred yards before the tunnel ahead split in three directions.

"Ellie!" Chuck bellowed, then listened as the echoes died down.

A faint noise came from the right-most tunnel. He couldn't tell if it was Ellie, an animal, or an armed and pissed off psychopath, but it wasn't his own voice.

"I'm coming! And if that's not Ellie, please don't kill me!"

-

_Yes. He is coming. So many secrets, so worth keeping. He holds all the secrets, she holds none. Perfection. They are worth keeping. Pride of the place, my old inner sanctum._

_He'll tell her everything. And then I'll keep them there together. Forever._

-

As soon as Casey had lowered his weapon, Dean had gone straight for the bag of weapons in the back seat of the Impala. The trunk had more options, but he was still loath to reveal the hidden compartment to anyone. One of the salt guns was missing; Dean was relieved. Wherever Sam was, he was armed appropriately.

He didn't relay this information to Casey because knowing Sam had had time to arm himself would not add strength to this feeble alliance.

Casey turned off the Crown Victoria and went to his trunk. "Dean Winchester, hunh? More I think about it, the more familiar that name sounds."

"Yeah, I'm one of the FBI's most wanted," said Dean in his best 'is it true or is it bullshit' tone of voice.

"Anything that's a threat to national security?"

"Nope." Dean said truthfully.

"Fine then."

Over half the spare shells were gone too, Dean noted. Also a good sign.

"So...." said Dean, loading another shotgun with some of the remaining salt-shells. "You work in retail, hunh?"

Casey grunted. "And you work in...?"

Dean nodded and closed the back door of the Impala with a smirk. "Fair enough."

Casey closed his trunk, hefting the gun with the red laser sight and one that looked a bit odd. Dean cocked an eyebrow as he shouldered his bag full of guns.

"Trank gun. Handy sometimes."

Dean shone his flashlight toward the cave trail, then back towards Casey. "I'm sorry I insulted your car and thought you were a chick."

"And I'm sorry I didn't kick your ass when I wasn't so pressed for time."

Dean grinned and hoisted a salt-loaded shotgun. "Shall we?"

Casey grunted eloquently.

-

It wasn't a bad place, as far as hovels full of guns went. Water, food, a bed, heat from somewhere, she wasn't sure where, but the room was warmer than the rest of the caves. Lots of light, there were enough glowsticks to last for weeks.

Since some were activated before she got there, she knew someone was coming back. Someone.

Ellie slid off the cot, went to the nearest gun case and picked up a gun at random. Everything about it felt wrong. It was too heavy, too cold. She had no idea or intent to shoot it, and no clue whether it was loaded or not. But she was an unexpected guest in the hidey-hole of a person who liked guns an awful lot. Sitting there without any hint of defense that the unknown resident of this place would understand, well, if it wasn't stupid, it certainly wasn't wise.

She went back to the cot and sat with her back to the wall, watching the entrances, not sure what to do with the gun in her hand.

She looked down at it. This was made to kill people. The statistics for accidental gun deaths ran through her head. What if her friends found her first? What if Chuck came charging in through one of the entrances to this place...

"What am I _doing?"_ She went back to the gun case and dropped the gun back in like it was contagious.

_I don't know what to do, but that's not an option. When the person who lives here comes back, I'll, I'll.... Something._

Beside her in the chest full of glowsticks, one of the lit ones started to wane. A tiny snap, and another glowstick began burning greenly.

-

_Soon. Soon. Secrets to share and death to keep. Death to share and secrets to keep. One and the same._

_Secrets get shared, people die. That's how it is._

_People gave me secrets whether they wanted to or not, I shared them, people died. They tried to take my secrets from me. They shot me, hurt me, but I ran, into the dark. No one could find me. I died. My own secret got shared, I died._

_That is the way it should always be. Secrets and death and no separation between them._

_Soon._


	5. Chapter 5

"What do you think?" Dean asked. "Armory? Stock room? Both?"

"Both. Anything else would be impractical."

The long tunnel they were skulking down was rife with short chamber-like branches, necessitating slow travel as they checked each one for signs of life. Or in Dean's case, with the EMF in his pocket, signs of un-life.

Many of the chambers were full of haphazardly stacked gun crates emblazoned with the same symbol as was on the cave entrance. _Ah. It's a logo. Bobby would have laughed his ass off._ He opened a case and whistled. "Grenades."

Casey glanced over Dean's shoulder and grunted appreciatively. "Thermite grenades. Burns everything down to slag."

Dean beamed, remembering a batch of thermite grenades Caleb had 'acquired' in the mid '90's. Fastest salt-n-burns ever. He saw Casey watching him out of the corner of his eye and adjusted his expression so it was less 'kid in a candy store' and more 'I have never heard of this strange weaponry before, officer'. "Really?" he said.

Casey snorted.

As they continued along the tunnel more of the chambers were blocked off with rubble.

Casey shone his light at the ceiling and frowned. "These tunnels aren't that unstable. And cave-ins aren't that precise."

"Maybe it happened during that big quake out here a while back." _Sure it did._ Holding his small flashlight between his teeth, Dean clambered up onto a rock fall to a tiny crevice near the top. He pulled some looser rocks away. Wedged into the crevice from the other side was a decomposed hand, fingernails torn and bloody.

"Gachhh..." Dean said, grimacing around his flashlight.

"What?"

Dean removed the flashlight from between his teeth. "Found some of the hikers that disappeared." He climbed a little higher and shone his flashlight in past the hand. The chamber beyond the rock fall illuminated to reveal three more corpses besides the one clinging to the crevice, all in nearly unweathered L.L. Bean hiking gear. "Probably the executives that went missing last summer."

Casey bared his teeth. "The guy's been killing anyone who got too close to his bunker for years and we never knew."

Dean flicked a glance to Casey and back to the oubliette full of corpses. "Something like that." He jumped down off the rock fall and called out. "Saaaam!" The echoes rebounded down the tunnel into the black distance.

"Subtle, Winchester."

"I'm pretty sure your, uh, 'guy' already knows we're here anyway."

Casey grunted. "Point taken."

Flashlights and guns at the ready, the two men proceeded down the tunnel.

-

_So many intruders with secrets, more than ever before. The weight of them stretches me. It itches like fire. I like it._

-

After a long while of nervous walking along the tunnels, taking the branches that seemed to have a faint glow and a hint of maybe a voice after he called out, Chuck started to feel like he was in a really boring first-person shooter video game.

_Not that boring is bad. Better boring than random thugs attacking. Although maybe it's not such a hot idea to follow the vague green glow. In video games that usually leads to face-sucking aliens._

Chuck turned a greenly-lit corner and entered a room-like section of tunnel with a cot and ammo cases, lit with glow-sticks. A familiar figure lurked in the shadows beside the cot, holding her unlit flashlight like a club.

"Ellie?"

"Chuck!" Ellie lowered her flashlight and hobbled across the room to hug her brother.

"Are you okay? You're limping!"

"I'm fine Chuck, it's just- can we get out of here?"

Chuck looked at Ellie. She was dirt-smudged and the corners of her eyes were pinched white with strain. This was his big sister, his strong rock and seeing her unflappability... flapped shook him in ways he couldn't put into words. All because his new spy life kept getting in the way of his real life. "Ellie, I wanted to say, I'm sorry. I keep screwing up, then screwing up apologizing for screwing up and this..." Chuck looked around the room at the weapon crates. "This is pretty epic."

Ellie frowned at him. "I appreciate the sentiment, but can we discuss this later? Let's get out of here before the person who lives here with all the guns comes back."

Chuck heard what Ellie was saying, but somehow the possible return of a crazed arms dealer didn't seem as important as telling Ellie the truth. He wished he could tell her everything.

He wanted to tell Ellie the real reason he missed their special family-of-two day was that he was helping rescue a Chinese diplomat from the restaurant they'd been getting shrimp at for the past several years. He wanted to tell her everything about the Intersect and what it meant to have a head stuffed full of encoded government secrets.

Chuck felt weird. Nauseous in the brain. Like he'd been playing Tetris for thirty hours straight.

"Chuck? What's wrong? Chuck?!"

Ellie sounded like she was talking to him from miles away, but she also sounded worried. He didn't want her to worry. Chuck wanted to tell her Sarah and Casey weren't stalkers, they were government agents assigned to protect him and keep him secret, so there wasn't any reason to worry. He wanted to tell her the real reason the deputy ambassador from Zaire had to return home suddenly two months ago, and why the third game of the World Series last year had been moved forward a day, and why-

Chuck hadn't seen anything. He hadn't looked at or heard or seen anything that might trigger a flash. But the images started flipping through his mind's eye. Thousands upon thousands of top secret government files started cascading in his mind, as fast as they had when he first got the e-mail from Bryce Larkin that put them in his head in the first place.

Chuck Bartowski started to flash and couldn't stop.

-

_So many secrets. He sees them now. He sees the death he contains. He'll share it. He won't have any choice. I won't allow him to have any choice._

_I'll make him see them all._

-

"So, your arms dealer, is he dead?" Sam said conversationally, hoping to catch Sarah off-guard.

Sarah seemed to fight a brief internal battle before answering. "...apparently not."

"But you'd been sure he was dead before this, right?"

Sarah's flashlight spotlighted Sam from behind, casting his shadow far ahead of them. "You're not going to claim he's a ghost, are you? Even if ghosts existed, how could one be doing all this?"

"You'd be surprised. Me and my brother, we've met a lot of really active dead people."

Behind Sam, Sarah snorted and moved her flashlight's aim.

"Here's another thing. Why would an arms dealer set up a base so close to a campground?" Sam mused quietly, scoping out the tunnel ahead.

He could almost hear the shrug in Sarah's voice. "Hiding in plain sight, accessibility to clients, cover. Sheer perversity. Who knows?"

Ellie's distressed voice calling her brother's name floated down the corridor. They ran towards the sound.

Sam and Sarah entered the room with the cot to see Chuck staring at a blank wall, eyelids fluttering and mouth hanging open. Ellie jittered in front of him, holding him by the shoulders, shouting into his face.

"What's going on?" asked Sarah, tucking her weapon away before Ellie could see it.

"I don't know, I think Chuck's having a _petit mal_ seizure, but he's not epileptic. Chuck!"

Sarah looked at the crates of guns and glowsticks. "We need to get him out of here. Sam, can you help me carry him?"

"Hey, hey, the gang's all here," Dean said cheerfully as he and Casey entered the room from a different tunnel. "What's up with Chuck?"

"Never mind," said Sarah turning to Casey. "Casey, we need to get Chuck and Ellie out of here."

Casey took one look at Chuck's expression, glanced at Ellie and the Winchesters, then folded Chuck off his feet and over his shoulder into a fireman's carry.

"The path we took was a little-" Casey pointedly glanced at Ellie, who was snagging an armload of glowsticks. "-difficult. Which way did you come, Sarah?"

Sarah pointed. "That way. It was clear."

"Yes," said Dean, "you all need to get out now, we'll bring up the rear."

Casey shot Dean a look before taking Chuck into the tunnel. Ellie snapped a glowstick and dropped it at the path entrance before following after Casey and her brother, closely followed by Sarah.

"Sarah, hang on," Sam called.

"What?"

He handed Sarah the shotgun full of salt rounds. "Here."

Sarah raised an eyebrow at the weapon. "You do know that I'm armed, Sam."

"I know." Sam ran a hand through his hair. "But, uh, you seem to be hiding that from Ellie and having my shotgun might be easier to explain. You see anything moving, anything, no matter what it looks like, shoot it with that."

"What if it's one of you two?"

"Rock salt rounds. Rather be shot with this gun than yours any day."

"Got it." Sarah took the gun and jogged after the rest of the group.

"Right," said Dean, handing Sam the second salt gun from the bag on his shoulder. "Let's go find this guy. I think I know where to start looking."

-

Ellie followed after Casey and Chuck, pausing at each junction to snap a glowstick and drop it on the ground.

 _Not getting lost again in here. Not when Chuck's hurt._ She saw Sarah coming up behind and was startled that besides her flashlight, Sarah was carrying something else.

"Sarah? You've got a shotgun?"

"This?" Sarah shifted her grip on it so that it looked even less natural for her to be carrying it. "Sam told me to take it. He and his brother are, um, hunters, I guess."

"Oh. Ew." Ellie winced at the thought of killing wild animals for fun.

"Lucky for us though. Some kind of crazy survivalist gun nut must live in these caves!"

"I know! I can't believe it. Did you see all the guns in that room?"

"Yes," said Sarah, nodding. "Very scary."

Ellie looked at the shotgun in Sarah's hands dubiously. "You know how to shoot that thing?"

Sarah grinned as they followed along behind Casey and Chuck. "Sam said to point it away from anything I don't want to hit and pull the trigger. It's, um, not loaded with real bullets, they use it mainly to make noise, to flush out game. If this survivalist guy shows up it should scare him enough that we can all run away."

"Oh, okay." Ellie was relieved. "So it's not like a real gun then."

"Not really."

Casey cursed in the tunnel up ahead. Ellie ran up, and checked on Chuck first by reflex. No change. "What's wrong?"

"Keep losing my footing, the floor's slippery or something. Keeps shifting under me. Could you do me a big favor, Ellie, and shine your light so I can see where I'm putting my feet? Hard to aim a flashlight and carry Chuck."

"Of course, John!" _Stop thinking about guns, Ellie Bartowski. Chuck needs you. John and Sarah need you too. You're a doctor, you're used to dealing with crisis situations, they aren't._ "You're doing a very good fireman's carry, by the way."

"Thanks. It's uh, standard Buy More first aid training." Casey shifted Chuck's weight on his shoulders and trudged on.

-

_He's getting away! They're taking him away! How dare they! He's mine!_

_Fall down you great oaf, don't you carry him away! Your secrets are meager compared to his. Drop him, bring him back, bring him back to me! His secrets are mine! All the secrets are mine to keep!_

-

Sam shone his light up and down the tunnel Dean and Casey had come up earlier. "So the blocked off ones have the missing hikers in them?"

"Yep."

"Grim."

"Just like I said."

"Why aren't they haunting the place too, though?"

"I figure this arms dealer guy is 'keeping' them here in more ways than one." Dean flicked his light over the row of caved-in chambers. "When we find him and salt and burn his ass, the rest should be cut loose. I don't think they'll stick around and cause any problems."

" _If_ we find the guy. This place is a rat's nest."

"If we don't find him, we do the next best thing."

"Which is?"

Dean grinned. "Taste of his own medicine. Blow the cave entrance, wall him up down here. He did it to them, it'd be poetic or something."

"You really think that'll do any good, with that hole-popping trick he does?"

Dean went into a nearby alcove and shone his light around at the weapons cases. "We could set everything off. Collapse it all."

"What? Blow the place up? You know that's nuts, right?"

"Why not?"

Sam tapped his index finger on the side of his flashlight. "One, blowing up an extended cave system could cause massive surface disruption, fires-"

"Spare me the environmental impact statement, Sam. Bottom line is this ghost is going to keep killing people who wander through the park with secrets until he's stopped, so we gotta stop him."

Sam pursed his lips in frustration and continued as though Dean hadn't spoken, pressing his middle finger against his flashlight. " _Two._ How do we even know that'll work? What if the caves collapse and he still haunts what's left of the park?"

Dean ignored Sam, peering into weapons crates. "Will you look at some of the stuff this guy has? It's like Dad's lock-up in Black Rock. No, like Caleb's basement. This stuff's awesome."

"No souvenirs." Sam warned. "He might haunt them"

"Crap. Yeah. Last thing we need is haunted weaponry." Dean opened a smaller weapons case in the corner of the alcove. "Oh, no. No, no, no."

"What? What did you find?"

Dean stepped away from the case. "Take a look."

Sam looked in, expecting yet another example of deadly military creativity, but the case was empty. More than empty. A low tunnel led down and away.

"Nice little bolt-hole, one that exits into a room full of weapons." Sam shone his flashlight around the inside of the fake gun box. "Sliding false bottom, but it's only halfway shut."

Dean reached in and scrubbed his fingers across a dried brownish substance smeared on the edge of the false bottom. "Blood."

Sam flicked his flashlight around the hole. "Figure he's down there?"

"If he got attacked, shot or something, hauled ass back here, crawled in and died..."

"Great. I guess we're going in then." Sam straightened up and looked down at Dean. "Rock, paper-"

"Ohhh no," said Dean, tucking his flashlight under his arm and reaching for the lid of one of the weapon cases. "I have a _much_ better idea."

"What?" Sam said, nervous of the sudden glee in Dean's eyes.

Dean grinned and opened the case with a flourish. Inside lay piles of smooth green-gray spheroids.

"Grenades?! You _are_ crazy."

Dean held up a grenade and shook it so the pin jingled. " _Thermite_ grenades. Incendiary."

"Like those ones Caleb had in '95?"

"Exactly. Dump most of these down there, rig a delay on a couple, close the lid, foom." Dean shone his flashlight down into the hole with a glint in his eye. "No salt, but it'll sure as hell burn."

Sam's light darted between the cases around the room. "It's still no good, Dean, the heat will set off the rest of the munitions here."

"It's our only option. It's the only way to be sure we've torched this guy's bones."

"It's still not a good idea."

"Not many things we do are." Dean put his flashlight down on top of a tower of boxes and dragged a full crate of grenades over to the false-bottomed ammo case. "Come on, Sammy, let's load him up."

-

As soon as Chuck crossed the line of salt at the cave entrance, the flash-cascade stopped. He opened his eyes to see the world upside down from somewhere near Casey's left armpit.

"Wha-"

"It's okay, Chuck, we found you and _Ellie_ ," Sarah said. _In other words, Ellie's here, so don't say anything to compromise mission security. Gotcha._

"Chuck! Are you all right?" Ellie hove into view, filling Chuck's entire field of vision as she pulled his eyelids further up. Or down, since he was upside down. His head hurt.

"I'm fine. I'm just um." Chuck was rescued from having to think of something logical to say by Casey returning Chuck's feet to the ground and slapping him on the back. _I just had the intelligence data of a large portion of the world streaming live in my head. My processors are a little bogged._

"You were not fine!" Ellie said. "It looked like you were having a seizure back there! I need you to tell me if you remember everything, or if you have a blank spot in your memory."

"What?" _Blank spot? The exact opposite, really._

"Please answer the question. This is important Chuck." Ellie had her sternest Doctor Big Sister look.

"Of course I remember, Ellie, okay? I was just freaking out a little. I'm fine, it's just, um. Guns. I guess."

Ellie looked puzzled. "But you play _Call of Duty 4_ almost every day with Morgan."

"Uh. Right. Real guns, waaay different. Kinda freaked out."

"Hunh. Well, I suppose it's a good thing all the video games you play haven't desensitized you to violence."

"Ha. Ha ha. No." Chuck looked over Ellie's shoulder at Casey, who smirked.

-

_He's been taken from me! All the secrets, all the death they could become, gone!_

_But there are still some in my domain with secrets, ones they don't want to tell. Those are the ones that always fetch the highest price from those that want to hear them, whether the price is paid in money or blood._

_Money or blood, or both. No use for money any more, but the blood, that is always welcome payment._

_He'll do. They'll pay._

-

Ellie ran ahead to get her first aid kit when Chuck mentioned his head hurt. He hoped he could downplay the whole 'uncontrollable flashing' incident enough that she wouldn't haul him into the hospital and insist he get a CAT scan or something.

"What the hell happened there Chuck?" muttered Casey as soon as Ellie was out of earshot.

"I started flashing and it wouldn't stop."

Sarah nodded. "No surprise there, half the stuff in that room was probably connected to some secret or operation of some kind."

"Like a 'stack/heap collision' then?" Chuck rubbed his head. "Too much data, not enough RAM? Although that makes me sound like an idiot."

Casey smiled. "Sure, let's go with that."

"I think there was some kind of truth gas too," Sarah added.

"Truth gas?"

"Aerosolized pentathol. A mild dose, but that would be my guess. I could feel the effect." They were coming close to the end of the trail. Sarah's eyes flicked towards the campsite where Ellie's flashlight illuminated the Bartowski's tent. "Maybe a canister leaking in that room."

Chuck laughed. "What kind of a weapon is truth gas?"

"Pipe it into the air conditioning at UN headquarters and you'd start World War Three within twenty minutes," Casey growled.

"Okay, yeah. I can see that."

Chuck looked around the campsite. The fire was long dead. In the pre-dawn light he could make out the shapes of the Nerd Herder and the Impala.

Chuck frowned and looked back toward the cave trail. "Where are Sam and Dean?"

-

The EMF began squealing constantly as Dean and Sam scooped thermite grenades into the arms dealer's final hiding place like shoveling coal into a train engine.

"Uh oh, Casper's pissed." Dean grimly doubled his grenade-scooping speed.

Sam was overcome by a sudden urge to tell Dean everything. It's not like his plan was really a huge secret, just that if he told Dean, Dean would say no and try to stop Sam from saving his life, which would be inconvenient. He could present it as a passing thought instead of a plan he'd been looking for a chance to act on since Elizabethville.

Sam shook his head and frowned. _What the hell? Of course I'm not telling him. It'd just piss him off. Sometimes you have to keep a secret to save your family._

The ground shivered under Sam's foot as he swiveled to scoop out another armload of grenades. He slipped, flashlight spinning wildly as he threw his arms out to catch himself but a protrusion of the rock wall caught him in the temple. Fireworks went off behind his eyes.

"Sam!" Dean went to Sam and grabbed him by the elbow to help him up.

"I've got a plan to end your deal," groaned Sam, getting to his feet, leaning on Dean's arm.

"What?" The light from Dean's flashlight hit him square in the face.

Sam frowned, blocking the light with a hand. "I didn't mean to say that. Never mind."

"You didn't mean it and you didn't mean to _say_ it aren't the same thing, Sammy. Spit it out." Sam couldn't see his face behind the light, but from his tone of voice Dean wasn't in the mood to take any crap.

"I've got a plan." Sam felt like the words were being pulled out of him. "I've had it for a while, I've just been waiting for a chance. I take the Colt, summon the Crossroads demon and threaten her. Maybe shoot her."

"No way Sam. No way. That's never gonna happen!"

"Why not? It's worth trying!"

"It's not, even if-"

The floor shook, and chunks of rock fell from the cave ceiling.

"You haven't set off the grenades already, have you?" Sam asked in alarm.

"Nope." Dean stood, and scooped a few thermite grenades out onto the cave floor. "Either we got a Balrog, or our friendly neighborhood dead arms dealer is trying to entomb us. Help me with this."

Low booms of munitions exploding deep within the caves shook the walls as Sam and Dean took either side of the crate of grenades and dumped the remainder down the tunnel under the false-bottomed ammo case. Rocks and debris fell around them.

"Now what?"

Dean grabbed three grenades, pulled the pins on all of them, and dropped them in, closing the lid and jamming the latch with a quick kick.

"Now we run!"

-

_The fire is coming. It spreads, down the tunnels, to where I've hid myself away, where my bones lie, my own secret, my own death. I become my own last secret._

_I will become-_

-

After about five minutes of dodging falling rocks and keeping their footing as the path under their feet almost squirmed like a nest of rattlesnakes, the shaking stopped and the EMF fell silent. The rocks falling from the ceiling as the Winchesters ran seemed much less targeted, and the ground stayed in one place.

"I do believe we got him." Dean grinned.

The Winchesters followed the glowstick trail Ellie had left out to the cave entrance, dodging less malevolent falling debris.

-

It was nearly sunrise; the light made flashlights unnecessary, and the first birds of the morning were starting to sing in the abandoned campground. Sam, Chuck and Ellie stood in a little knot beside the Nerd Herder.

"Some crazy old survivalist living in the caves," said Ellie. "Who knew?"

"Yeah, weird, hunh?" Chuck grinned a little too broadly.

"Totally weird," agreed Sam. It was a plausible fiction for what really happened in the caves.

"You think he was living there when we went camping with Mom and Dad, Chuck? Some of the stuff down there looked like it had been there a long time."

Chuck shrugged and shook his head. "I doubt it. This whole campsite with loads of people in it? Not a smart place to set up a secret survival bunker. Right?"

"I guess not," said Sam. _Even though that symbol has been on the cave wall for at least twenty years, if I'm any judge._ From the shifting, faintly horrified expression on Chuck's face, Sam could tell he was thinking the same thing.

"Well, it was great to meet you Sam," Ellie spread her arms wide and folded Sam into a hug. "Thank you."

"Um, yeah, no problem. Good to meet you too," Sam said, bemused.

She released Sam and turned to Chuck. "I'm going to start packing up. The sooner I get to a real bathroom with a real shower the better."

"Tell me about it," groaned Chuck.

Ellie grinned. "Devon's never going to believe all this. I feel like Nancy Drew, finding secret smugglers' caves!"

Chuck grinned. "He'll think it's awesome, just like the corn on the cob."

Sam and Chuck watched Ellie disappear into the tent.

"So," said Chuck, turning to Sam. "In case you haven't noticed, my life got a little weird after I left Stanford. You?"

Sam chuckled and nodded. "Yeah. Mine was always weird, though. Stanford was about as normal as it got."

"Ouch."

Sam shrugged.

Chuck clapped his hands together and pointed, like he was aiming a brilliant idea at the center of Sam's chest. "Hey! You know, we should swap e-mails or something! Stay in touch, exchange seasonal e-cards and stuff!"

"Um." Sam winced. "Nothing personal but given the people you hang out with... I probably shouldn't leave you any contact information."

Chuck nodded, looking over to where Casey and Sarah were standing next to the Impala and talking with Dean. "You have a point."

"Take care, alright? Watch out for your sister." Sam held out a hand for a handshake.

"You too." Chuck shook Sam's hand and slapped him on the shoulder. "Take care of Dean."

Sam glanced across the campsite at Dean. "I intend to."

-

Over by the Impala, Casey smirked at Dean. "Whatever happened down there, there's a cell signal now. Civilian authorities will be here in forty-five minutes."

Sarah shot a glance at Casey. " _Twenty_ -five minutes."

Dean smirked back. "We'll be gone in five."

Casey grunted. Dean thought it sounded faintly disappointed, with a hint of respectful amusement. _When you can interpret the grunts of some random guy you met in a haunted campground less than 24 hours ago, it's a sign you need to leave._

"Come on, Sammy, shake a leg!" he shouted as he got in behind the wheel of the Impala and shut the door.

Sam waved acknowledgment from across the campsite and exchanged a few more words with Chuck.

Dean looked back up at Sarah and Casey, squinting into the first rays of full morning sunlight. "You know, those people down in the caves are still listed as missing..."

"Oh they'll be found," said Casey. "Just not here."

Dean nodded. "Good."

Sam jogged over, got in and slammed the door. Dean started the engine.

"So," said Sam, ducking low to look at Sarah and Casey from the passenger side of the car. "Good luck with the, uh, TV selling and hot dog making."

Sarah smiled innocently. "And good luck with whatever it is you really do."

"See you around, Winchesters," Casey growled.

Dean grinned. "Not if we can help it."

-

The Impala rolled over the ruts and scrub of the abandoned campground trails. Sam had retrieved his phone from Dean and was checking through his messages as a way of stalling the conversation he figured was going to happen. Dean's face was flat, bland. That was never a good sign.

Sam pocketed his phone.

"Anything good," Dean asked.

"Possible werewolf attack in Maple Springs, New York. Also, we can get a subscription to Good Housekeeping for twenty-five percent off."

"Great. I need some tips on knitting my own dust-ruffle."

They bumped over the ruts in silence for a while.

Dean inhaled and looked over at Sam. "What you said back there, in the caves-"

"Dean, I wasn't gonna tell you."

"I know you weren't gonna tell me!" Dean snapped. "You think that's reassuring, Sam? That you'd cook up some half-assed plan to get yourself killed and not even tell me, just go ahead with it?"

Sam stared out the window at the greenery rolling past.

"There is no getting out of this for me, Sammy, so no more bullshit about using the Colt on the Crossroads Demon, or trying to break my deal. Okay?"

Sam shifted in the passenger seat, turning further toward the window. "Fine."

"I mean it, Sam."

"I said 'fine', Dean."

"Fine. End of discussion then."

The Impala rolled out of the campground and on to the road, heading toward the East Coast.

\- - -  
(that's all. Hope you enjoyed it!)  
(Anyone who wants to read my ramblings about this fic or my writing process in general, there's a " ~~DVD~~ Fanfic Extra" [here](http://caffienekitty.livejournal.com/186147.html).)


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